Jessica: Kate Sheppard

Describe your impressions of how the women dressed and were expected to behave in 1893.

Name the three groups with which voteless women were classed.

Discuss why Kate Sheppard often tops polls about influential females in New Zealand.

Imagine it is 1892. Prepare a speech of between half a page and a page about why women should get the vote. 

Work out what year it will be when you turn 50. Predict how New Zealand will be organized then. For example, will it still have the parliament? If so, what will the minimum voting age be?

Web search: Find five cartoons from New Zealand about women’s suffrage.

Back in that time women who were not in the higher classes of society were expected to be housewives and do nothing but clean, cook and be there for her husband when he got home. The women were expected to be perfect and know nothing of politics unless they were of a higher class, even then, many women weren't too involved and known to be very unpolitical, focussing on other occupations and opportunities. They were expected to wear clothing that showed no skin and would go as high up her chin. The dresses they wore would reach their ankles and this would be the same no matter the season, their forced fashion was thought to be practical and even showing the slightest bit of skin was considered vulgar and inappropriate.

Voteless women were classed as lunatics, juveniles and criminals.

Kate Sheppard will often top the poll when it comes to influential females because she is the one who led the women and men who helped support the right of females voting in such polls and other forms of voting.

Women, we are the very root of men's lives, we are the mothers and sisters of these men who refuse to
let us have rights over what we and they do. Why should a mother not be able to vote and help decide
the fate of the place and people that help raise her child? Why should a sister not be able to vote when
her criminal brother can? In our youth, we would play with our brothers and feel no difference when it
came to beliefs and rights, but as the men grow, their minds become polluted with beliefs and
expectations that women are not to be trusted with the fate of the country and the people we want the
best for. They start to believe that we are insignificant compared to them because they have been
influenced by fathers, brothers and so many other men, who think of women as nothing but housewives.
The little boys we used to play with so happily have seen their own mothers and sister grow up to be
housewives and think ‘This is the fate of all women unless they are rich and they would only be rich
because of fathers.’. We, as women and men, must change our ways and the ways that these children
learn, a woman should not be forced into her future or have it known to her. For a man, he can be
anything, go anywhere, so, if men are capable of so much, why can’t a woman be? Why should a
woman’s life be condemned to a household and cleaning it? Because that's what men want, women do
what men want and we need to change that, we need to be able to challenge the future and help these
men advance technology. We need to vote to help men advance the future because women are the
future, women and men working together to achieve more than ever seen before is the true future for our
small country, our small place in the world.

It will be the year 2055 when I turn 50 and I think the world will have really changed by then, I think that
New Zealand will still have a form of Parliament that will be just a bit more organized and helpful by then.
The Parliament will have become more open and be led by a team of politicians rather than one. I think
that by this time the minimum voting age for New Zealand will be around thirteen to fifteen because I
believe that by then the world would have realized that teenagers should be able to decide their and their
countries future.