New Zealand became the first self-governing country to grant women the right to vote in 1893.
The Electoral Act became law on 19 September 1893, extending the parliamentary vote to women. The campaign was strongly associated with Kate Sheppard and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, which organised petitions and public activism. Nearly 32,000 women voted in the general election held later that year.
New Zealand’s achievement did not immediately give women the right to stand for Parliament; women gained that right in 1919, and Elizabeth McCombs became the first woman elected to the New Zealand House of Representatives in 1933.
The wording matters because some territories or local jurisdictions had earlier forms of female suffrage. New Zealand’s 1893 reform is commonly described as the first national parliamentary enfranchisement of women in a self-governing country.