Kate Sheppard

• Born: March 10, 1847
• Birthplace: Liverpool, United Kingdom
• Died: July 13, 1934
• Place of death: Christchurch, New Zealand

Significance

Kate Sheppard was an English-born activist for women's rights. She believed in gender equality and supported related issues such as economic independence for married women, equal property rights, children guardianship, and the right for women to work outside the home. She led the movement for women's suffrage in New Zealand, and played a role in the women's suffrage movements in England and the United States.

Early Life

Catherine Wilson Malcolm was born in Liverpool, England, probably on March 10, 1847. Her parents were Andrew Wilson Malcolm, a lawyer, and Jemima Crawford Souter, a musician. One of five children, she had two brothers and two sisters. She was raised throughout Great Britain, including in London, England, in Dublin, Ireland, and in Nairn, Scotland.

Sheppard received a strong education, especially in the sciences and arts. She also received a strong religious education from her uncle in Nairn, who was a minister in the Free Church of Scotland. Named after her grandmother, she preferred to be called Katherine or Kate. Her father died in 1862, when she was fifteen. When she was about twenty-one, Kate, her widowed mother, two brothers, and a sister moved to New Zealand. They settled in Christchurch, where Kate's older, married sister lived.

Life as an Activist

In the early 1870s, Sheppard was an active member of the Trinity Congregational Church. She attended Bible classes, taught Sunday school, participated in fund raisers, and was the secretary of the ladies association.

Sheppard also became involved in the growing temperance movement (against alcohol consumption) in New Zealand and was an early feminist. Her initial causes were dress reform, physical exercise, and equal status in marriage. She encouraged women to stop wearing the restrictive clothing, such as corsets, that constituted traditional attire for women, and to dress in more comfortable clothing that allowed freer physical movement.

She also promoted physical activity for women, such as walking, hiking, and biking, believing that exercise promoted health and was more beneficial than the ladylike and sedate activities that were the norm for women of the era. She was one of the first women bicyclists in Christchurch. She also was a strong advocate for equal rights in marriage, believing that equality between the sexes was necessary for a true partnership in marriage to exist.

In 1885, American Mary Leavitt toured New Zealand on behalf of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) of the United States. Originally founded as a protemperance organization, the WCTU quickly took on a feminist identity and tackled a wide range of social and political issues, especially those related to women's rights. Leavitt founded fifteen branches in New Zealand, where it was known as the Women's Christian Temperance Union. In New Zealand, the WCTU became the nation's first organization founded exclusively for and by women. Its members were prominent and socially active women in New Zealand.

Sheppard became a founding member of New Zealand's WCTU. In 1887, she became the national superintendent of her branch and of the legislative departments of the national organization. In this role, Sheppard led the campaign for women's suffrage in New Zealand. Sheppard campaigned by trying to reach as many women as possible. She toured New Zealand and held public meetings in communities throughout New Zealand. She organized meetings and lectures at churches, temperance groups, and political societies. She also coordinated activities of the local chapters of the WCTU.

Sheppard was also a noted writer and lecturer. She was a frequent speaker at meetings and arranged for other women to speak at meetings—with women holding a public platform for the first time in New Zealand. She also tried to stimulate interest in women's suffrage through public debates. In addition, Sheppard wrote letters to newspapers, sent politicians letters and telegrams, and circulated petitions. She wrote, printed, and distributed articles and pamphlets. One pamphlet she wrote was "Ten Reasons Why the Women in New Zealand Should Vote." In it, she pointed out that by denying women the right to vote, women were being given the same legal classification as juveniles, lunatics, and criminals.

The Suffrage Movement

Sheppard also maintained correspondence with leading suffragists in England, Australia, and the United States. She also orchestrated press coverage, keeping the cause of women's suffrage in the public eye as much as possible, and made strategic alliances with men, including politicians. She won the support of Sir John Hall, a Liberal member of parliament who proved to be a major ally in her campaign.

Sheppard had a strong conviction that woman should be allowed to fully participate in all spheres of life—social, political and economic—and that to exclude them in any sphere was to also devalue their role within the family. She argued that the only way for women to have any influence over liquor legislation was for them to have direct political power, both through the power of vote and the power of holding a seat in parliament. This was a persuasive argument and helped many women realize how voting would allow them to have a voice in important social and political issues.

In 1891, Sheppard inaugurated a women's page in the Prohibitionist, the national temperance magazine. For three years she edited the women's page under the pen name of Penelope, helping to increase awareness of women's suffrage as well as other issues related to women's rights, such as gender equality.

Over the years, members of the suffrage campaign had gathered signatures on petitions and submitted them to parliament. In 1891, Sheppard and her team stepped up their efforts and made a more concerted effort to get women to sign a petition asking for the right for women to vote. That year they gathered over nine thousand signatures on a petition they presented to Parliament.

The next year, they gathered over nineteen thousand signatures on a petition they submitted to parliament. In 1893, Sheppard headed up a team of six hundred volunteers who went out to remote rural areas of New Zealand. They gathered over 30,000 signatures, nearly one-third of the entire female population over the age of twenty-one in New Zealand. Sir John Hall presented the petition to Parliament, and on September 19, 1893, the New Zealand Parliament passed the Electoral Act. It was the first nation in the world to grant women the right to vote.

Over the next ten weeks, Sheppard and the suffragists worked hard to enroll as many women as possible for the upcoming election. An estimated 65 percent of the eligible women in New Zealand voted in the 1893 election.

International Acclaim

Following her successful suffrage campaign, Sheppard gained international attention. She traveled to England, where she met with other leading suffragists and feminists. She also was much in demand as a public speaker. In 1895, she attended the international WCTU convention in London as New Zealand's delegate. She also began editing the White Ribbon, the union's new journal. She edited it from 1895 until 1903. When Sheppard returned to New Zealand in 1896, she helped found the National Council of Women of New Zealand; she was elected its first president.

In 1903, Sheppard resigned from her position as the president of the National Council of Women of New Zealand. In ill health and due to her husband's desire to move to England, Sheppard withdrew from political life. She moved with her husband to England, but returned to New Zealand in 1905.

Sheppard moved in with the Lovell-Smith family. She was offered the opportunity to become the franchise superintendent of the World's WCTU, but turned it down due to her continued poor health. For the remainder of her life, she retained her interest in women's rights but had less of an active role than in the past. In 1907, she published the book Women's Suffrage in New Zealand. She corresponded with other activists across the globe, and in 1919, she wrote the address for the National Council of Women, but was unable to attend due to poor health.

Personal Life

On July 21, 1871, Kate married Walter Allen Sheppard, a grocer, general merchant, and Christchurch city councilor. She and Walter had one son, Douglas, born in 1880. When Sheppard moved back to New Zealand from England in 1905, her husband remained in England and died in 1915. In 1925, Sheppard married William Sidney Lovell-Smith, a longtime friend whose wife had died. He died four years later. On July 13, 1934, Kate Sheppard died in Christchurch. Shortly before her death, in 1934, she finally saw full equality for women in the political sphere come true when the first woman member of parliament was elected. New Zealand has since honored Sheppard for her lasting and significant contributions to the nation by putting her image on the $10 banknote.

Bibliography

Brewerton, Emma. "Kate Sheppard." New Zealand History. New Zealand Govt, 29 Sept. 2014. Web. 8 Apr. 2016.

Malcolm, Tessa K. "Sheppard, Katherine Wilson." Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara—The Encyclopedia of New Zealand, 12 Feb. 2014. Web. 8 Apr. 2016.