New Zealand became the first self-governing country where women won the right to vote in national elections in 1893.
The Electoral Act 1893 was signed into law on 19 September 1893. It followed a sustained campaign led by women’s suffrage advocates, especially Kate Sheppard, whose organizing and petitions helped persuade New Zealand’s Parliament.
Women voted in New Zealand’s general election later that year, held on 28 November 1893. Māori women were included in the franchise, although voting rights and political participation were shaped by the electoral system’s separate Māori seats and other restrictions of the period.
The achievement did not immediately give women the right to stand for Parliament; that came in 1919. New Zealand’s milestone is sometimes described too broadly as the first country in the world to grant women voting rights, but several territories and local jurisdictions had earlier forms of female suffrage. The precise claim is first self-governing country to establish national female suffrage.