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| ISBN-13: | 9781775582434 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Auckland University Press |
| Publication date: | 10/01/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 172 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
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Women's Suffrage in New Zealand
By Patricia Grimshaw
Auckland University Press
Copyright © 1987 Patricia GrimshawAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-77558-243-4
CHAPTER 1
The New Woman
When women's rights have come to stay,
Oh, who will rock the cradle?
When wives are at the polls all day,
Oh, who will rock the cradle?
When Doctor Mamma's making pills,
When Merchant Mamma's selling bills,
Of course, 'twill cure all women's ills,
But who will rock the cradle?
New Zealand Graphic, August 1891
In nineteenth-century Western society the traditional position of women was gradually altering under the influence of what became known as the feminist movement. The movement spread to many aspects of women's social, economic and political life, but in essence it worked for the emancipation of woman from her legal and social subjection to the male sex, and attempted to gain for her a degree of equality with man in every appropriate sphere, both public and private. As the principle of democracy spread in society, and more and more men were granted a voice in political affairs, it was to be expected that here was yet another domain in which women would sue for equal opportunity. Their aspirations in this sphere generally met determined opposition, and required an organized and sustained campaign for success. The interest of contemporary observers was often captured by such suffrage movements to a far greater extent than by the many other conquests, ill-defined and indistinct, but of equal importance, made by woman in her search for full development.
The life of New Zealand women in the first fifty years of the colony's existence had largely been one of harsh backbreaking toil as they strove with their menfolk to establish farms and settlements in this distant territory. For the most part isolated and absorbed in the practical necessities of daily life, they were nevertheless by no means untouched by the new ideas on women's rights that were current in the northern hemisphere. Before investigating the course of the suffrage movement in New Zealand and its success in 1893 it is important to place this in the context of the feminist movement as a whole and to see how it had affected women's position by that date.
Perhaps the two basic elements of nineteenth-century feminism were the education of girls and women at all levels and the undertaking of paid employment by an increasing number of women, who thus shared with the male population the task of breadwinning. Both these elements were clearly visible in the New Zealand of the early 1890s.
While the early settlements of New Zealand struggled through their first years, little regard was paid to the education of either boys or girls, which was haphazard even at the most elementary level. When communities began to discuss the provision of secondary schools it was the education of boys that concerned them. That girls in New Zealand nevertheless received an early opportunity for secondary education was largely the work of an educationalist from Port Chalmers, Miss Learmonth Dalrymple. A woman of wide interests in all aspects of education from the infant level upwards, Miss Dalrymple had taken a particular interest in furthering the higher education of her sex. A regular correspondent of Miss Buss and Miss Beale, who achieved so much for girls' secondary education in England, Miss Dalrymple was swift to seize the opportunity of putting their ideas into practice in her adopted country.
When in the 1860s discussion arose on the establishment of a boys' secondary school in Dunedin, Miss Dalrymple formed a committee of women, with herself at the head, to press for a school for girls. She enlisted the aid of a number of prominent Dunedin citizens, including James Fulton, W. H. Reynolds, J. Macandrew and Sir John Richardson, and succeeded in her campaign. Shortly after a boys' school opened its doors, the Otago Girls' High School followed, in 1871. Into the curriculum and organization of this school, Miss Dalrymple was able to put many of Miss Buss's ideas, and the Dunedin school in its turn served as a model for later girls' schools in Auckland, Christchurch, Wellington, Napier, Nelson, and Invercargill. In 1877, girls, along with their brothers, received the right to free primary education.
At the same time the foundation of a university was under discussion, and it was again Miss Dalrymple who acted to secure the inclusion of women. In 1871 when negotiations were in progress for a University of New Zealand, and the newly established Otago University Council was in session, Miss Dalrymple originated a petition for the admission of women to the university's lectures, degrees, and scholarships. The petition, signed by 149 Dunedin women, received a favourable response from the council, where the principle was warmly supported by Robert Stout. The University of New Zealand similarly passed no regulation making distinction between the sexes, and in 1874 Kate Milligan Edger, daughter of an Auckland nonconformist minister, commenced work for a mathematics degree. She graduated as Bachelor of Arts in 1877, the year before London University opened its degrees to women, and at the same time as English reformers were beginning their long struggle to gain full admission for women in the older English universities. Many more women followed in her footsteps, and by 1893 they constituted over half the number of university students in New Zealand.
Women students swiftly accustomed themselves to university life, and soon showed that intellectually they could well hold their own with the men. Although a certain amount of rivalry between the sexes was noted, tinged with bitterness when the women students surpassed the men, the presence of the girls appeared to be accepted fairly readily. At least one lecturer, William Steadman Aldis, who arrived in Auckland in the 1880s, was astonished at the casual way the presence of women students was accepted. In England he had once taught a class which contained a few girls, who huddled embarrassed at the back of the room. In Auckland he found 'a cheerful bevy of colonial damsels facing him from the front benches, whilst the men sat modestly at the back'. Some had feared that women would turn the university into a ladies' sewing guild, while others had expressed anxiety for the girls' mental health under the intellectual strain. It was soon evident, however, that women undergraduates abetted any extracurricular student activities, including boisterous capping ceremonies, which was felt to be a comfort, if not to a harassed chairman, at least to those who feared women students were 'incorrigible "blue stockings"'.
'Let us hear no more of the intellectual inferiority of women', an Auckland editor wrote when Kate Edger graduated, and from then on frequent astonishment was expressed that older universities still refused to admit women to their degrees. In 1890, for example, it was suggested that the University of New Zealand confer its own degrees on Cambridge and Oxford women graduates, as a hint, 'a pretty broad hint', that New Zealand considered their policies quite behind the times. A memorial was sent by the University Council to the University of Cambridge the following year pointing out the injustice of its attitude.
By 1893, therefore, all New Zealand girls received primary education, a certain number were receiving secondary education of a reasonably high standard, and a small but influential group were receiving university education. This education of girls was the primary achievement of the nineteenth-century feminist impulse; but the gradual infiltration of women of the middle and upper classes into public employment was seemingly the most novel to the contemporary observer.
By 1891, well over 45,000 women were classed as wage-earners. Most, perhaps, of these had been obliged to take up work from economic necessity, as the depression and poverty spread its grip on the New Zealand of the 'eighties; but many had done so with consciously feminist motives. They were now educated, and they wanted the independence gained from a job, a personal salary, a sense of greater importance in the community. The very fact of taking employment outside the home illustrated the changing attitude to the role of women, and, by introducing them to the competition of male workers and employers, and to increased regulation by the state, added to the ranks of conscious feminists in their number.
Of the spheres of work entered by the better educated New Zealand women, the one with easiest access was teaching. To instruct the young as governesses had long been considered appropriate female employment, and it was not difficult to transfer this attitude to teaching in public schools. William Rolleston, when Minister of Education, encouraged school committees to overcome prejudices against women teachers, and by 1880 reported that their percentage was rapidly rising. Large numbers of the early women graduates were welcomed in the new girls' secondary schools, where they continually raised the academic standard to rival the boys' schools. Kate Edger, for example, after teaching in Christchurch, became lady principal of the Nelson College for Girls; Helen Connon, the first woman master's graduate, became headmistress of the Christchurch Girls' High School; Ellen Pitcaithley headmistress of the Southland Girls' High School; Mary McLean headmistress of the Timaru Girls' High School. By far the largest number of women graduates went before and after marriage into teaching.
Women writers, journalists, authors, and poets appeared as the 'nineties approached. Edith Searle Grossmann published Angela: A Messenger in 1890, and In Revolt in 1893; Jessie Mackay's first volume of poetry appeared in 1889; Mrs Laura Suisted became in 1884 the first woman to sit in the parliamentary press gallery, and in 1891 the first woman to join the Institute of New Zealand Journalists. Other prominent women journalists were Mrs Margaret Bullock of Wanganui, Mrs Lizzie Frost Rattray of Auckland, and Mrs Marion Doyle of Dunedin.
'Why should a woman unsex herself by giving way to a morbid craving, which by its very popularity can only be likened to an epidemic of insanity?' Such was the reaction of a Dunedin doctor to the proposal of Emily Siedeberg, to enter the Otago Medical School in 1891. The medical profession everywhere had been notoriously opposed to the admission of women to its ranks. This proved to be the case in New Zealand also. The Otago Medical School had at no time explicitly excluded women from its classes, but during the 'eighties had adopted a policy of determined discouragement towards any hopeful entrants. A Miss Tracey had entered the school in 1884, but had been unable to withstand her cool reception. Emily Siedeberg however persevered even though six of the nine members of the medical staff opposed her entry and despite the fact that she was forced to absent herself from anatomy classes. Her fellow students were no more encouraging. A laboratory assistant later commended her courage in the dissecting room, where male students, who did not want women doctors, would throw human flesh at her when the opportunity afforded. As Margaret Cruikshank and other students joined the school, the situation gradually eased. With the admission of women to the medical profession it required but a few politicians to advocate in Parliament a similar opening of the legal profession, and Ethel Benjamin was enabled to become the first woman to take up the study of law.
While a handful of women were forcing their way into the professions, and a few more were managing their private farms and businesses, there was a far larger group without the advantages necessary to undertake such work, who were eager to provide themselves with occupations. With a female surplus arising in towns as the ratio between the sexes levelled, many women would in any case be forced to earn a living whether they wished to or not. Considerable discussion arose over what suitable employment there might be for them.
One occupation, however suitable it might seem, was decreasingly attractive to women: domestic service. Colonial girls were becoming too independent to accept the subservience entailed in a servant's position. Small numbers began to invade masculine strongholds in banks, post offices, and business offices, where women were noted to be remarkably facile with a new instrument, the typewriter. The entry of girls into such occupations did not go unopposed, least of all by members of their own sex higher up the social scale. Their attitude was reflected in a sketch of 1893, in which a young lady remarked: 'But I do wonder why the working classes are too proud to be servants, for one can tell at a glance what their position ought to be when one sees them in the telephone-exchange, or typewriting or teachers: and however well-dressed they may be, one can always detect the genuine article at once.'
Another occupation entered by many girls was nursing, now rising for the first time to the status of a profession. When in 1880 the Auckland Evening Star ventured to suggest that the few female attendants at the hospital seemed more efficient than the male, an outraged correspondent replied: 'I don't think that any female with the slightest pretence to modesty or self-respect would do such work, while there are plenty of men to do it, and whose work really it is'. But during the 'eighties larger numbers of educated girls were attracted to the work, and by 1890 twenty-six out of twenty-nine doctors in a Dunedin survey voted in favour of the services of female nurses. They had the added advantage, one doctor pointed out, that a male nurse was three times more expensive to pay than a female.
By 1891 over 11,000 women were employed in some type of industry. As early as the 1870s the preference which girls showed for this type of work, particularly above domestic service, had been noticed. 'Mothers may storm and argue', a southern paper remarked in 1878, 'but sweet seventeen loves her liberty, and will have none of the drudgery of domestic service while there is a pocket to be sewn into one of Mr. Hallenstein's waistcoats.' During the 'eighties female began to replace male labour in many factory positions, and the number of industries open to them was increasing.
The large increase in female labour in industry had one main source. Women and girls with lower educational attainments, who wished to make an independent living, or had a pressing need to do so as the depression gripped the country, all had one skill they could utilize — sewing. Restricted as they were by a lack of wider vocational training and yet unwilling to become domestic servants, it was to some branch of the sewing industry, as seamstresses, tailoresses, milliners or hosiery-makers, that so many women turned in the 'eighties.
In many industries and occupations entered by women in these years discrimination of some kind was exercised against them by male workers, who feared their encroachment on their own means of living. Employers had few scruples about exploiting such cheap and plentiful labour, particularly in the garment industry. Women, in factories or on piece work at home, were forced to work long hours for pitiful wages, which a former East End tailor reported were far lower than those currently paid at Whitechapel. The philosophy of the employers was indicated by an Auckland factory manager, who admitted that 'he thought no more of the girls than the machines they worked, and that it was his duty to make the very last shilling out of them.' Fear of dismissal and loss of the money which frequently kept them or their families from starvation coupled, perhaps, with greater natural timidity, prevented the kind of trade union organization which was then taking place for the first time among male unskilled workers. Finally, after an inquiry instigated by the Rev. Rutherford Waddell, a Tailoresses' Union was formed in Dunedin in 1889. Under the energetic and able leadership of Miss Harriet Morison strong branches of the union were gradually formed in each main centre. Miss Morison also undertook to help unions of waitresses and domestic servants. As these grew stronger, and as male unions, including the Knights of Labour, admitted women to their ranks, conditions for unskilled women workers improved.
By the early 1890's, then, women were receiving equal educational opportunities with men, had entered many hitherto masculine occupations, and had invaded the male world of unionism. That this constituted a remarkable change in woman's traditional role, many were fully aware. In 1891 a colonial paper remarked: 'So far as examinations by universities and active participation in the affairs of life constitute a fair test of proficiency and power, woman has completely turned the tables on her critics. She can write Greek or Latin, tackle the higher mathematics, give metaphysics, that fearsome science, a back fall, make a betting book, run a hotel, edit a newspaper, or manage a brewery.'
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Women's Suffrage in New Zealand by Patricia Grimshaw. Copyright © 1987 Patricia Grimshaw. Excerpted by permission of Auckland University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Preface,
List of Illustrations,
Introduction,
1 The New Woman,
2 Early Parliaments and Women's Rights,
3 Women and the Temperance Movement,
4 The Women's Christian Temperance Union,
5 The Suffrage Movement Gathers Way,
6 The Movement in Full Swing,
7 The Politicians' Dilemma,
8 The Debate on Women's Suffrage,
9 Success,
10 The First Election,
11 Liberals, Teetotallers, or Feminists?,
12 Post-Mortem on the Suffrage,
Afterword (1987),
Bibliography,
Index,
Plates,
Copyright,