The change I made

The change I made

My name is Silvia. I am now 20 years old. I’ve always believed that it is unfair that men are able to vote and work yet women can’t. This is my story about how I helped to change that.

Gender equality first sparked my interest in 1891, when I was 13 years old. My mother bought home a pamphlet which she had acquired while buying the groceries. The pamphlet written by Mary Ann Muller called “An appeal to the men of New Zealand” She thought that by allowing women to vote and work it would contribute to the nation. Kate Sheppard was a well known for her work on women's rights. Mary Ann Muller and Kate Sheppard had similar views on this point. After reading the pamphlet I decided that I was going to be part of the group fighting for women’s rights. I joined  The Women's Temperance Union. My mother, aunties and grandmothers did a lot of work there. The temperance union was dedicated to many things, women being able to vote was one of them. I joined the team that was solely dedicated to women’s rights .

When I joined, it was a very busy time at the temperance union because the union was preparing for a petition to be sent to parliament. I instantly signed it. Unfortunately the petition was unsuccessful because the Union didn’t get enough signatures. At least we managed to convince John Ballance, the Premier at the time and a few other politicians.   

This motivated us to get more signatures. The union had a meeting to work out ideas on how we were going to accomplish our goal. We knew we would have to start collecting signatures right away. We broke up into groups and I lead a team that was made up of high school girls. Everyday after school we would go door knocking with either a parent or one of my relatives who were really supportive of women rights. Each day we went to a different neighbourhoods. Sometimes it was easy to get signatures but at other times we had to explain why it was important for women to be able to vote. People would sometimes just slam the doors on us when we asked which I found just rude but   The union leaders were very happy with the work that my high school group was doing as I was the youngest member of the Union.  Soon my friends from the “high school group” joined the Union. Over the time that we collected signatures we became close friends.

I would go to all of Kate Sheppard’s speeches and was deeply inspired by her passion and the way in which she described a better future for women and New Zealand. One of Kate Sheppard’s famous quotes and my favourite is, “All that separates, whether of race, class, creed, or sex, is inhuman and must overcome.” I used this quote when collecting signatures. In addition to my school work we published articles in newspapers, on pamphlets and on signs about the petition. I loved the work I did with the Union. My dream was for the work of temperance union to pay off.

The next year, 1892, we sent another petition to the parliament, this time bigger but it still failed and women were still unable to vote.

The next year we worked even harder, making more pamphlets and not just about the petitions this time. There were pamphlets handed out at Kate Sheppard’s speeches while women with petition sheets roamed around collecting signatures. I remember this day in particular because it was a fine day. Kate Sheppard was giving one of her amazing speeches at the Wellington harbour the smell of salt was overwhelming and sea spray showered us. That day we  collected lots of signatures probably over two hundred signatures.

We sent a larger petition to parliament, and we were…

Successful! After receiving the good news we set to work on getting as many women as we could to vote because the union leaders and Kate Sheppard didn’t think that the parliament would advertise that women were able to vote and the elections were just around the corner. Despite little notice two thirds of women turned up. We were very happy that year.

I decided that I would work on more of the rights  that women deserve  such as being able to work. This is the change that I made.