r/history • u/paul-nikos • 13d ago
Discussion/Question Māori Women and the Fight for Suffrage: The Overlooked Legacy of Meri Te Tai Mangakāhia
I recently started researching the role of Māori women in securing the vote and was surprised by how little recognition they receive—especially outside Aotearoa (New Zealand). One name that stood out to me was Meri Te Tai Mangakāhia, a pioneering Māori suffragist whose contributions deserve more attention.
New Zealand is often celebrated as the first country in the world to grant women the right to vote in national elections (1893). However, this achievement is usually credited to the mainstream suffrage movement, which was largely led by Pākehā (white) women and focused on securing voting rights within the British colonial political system. What is less discussed is that Māori women were engaged in their own struggle for political representation—one that was deeply tied to the survival of their communities, land rights, and sovereignty.
In 1893, the same year New Zealand granted women the vote, Meri Te Tai Mangakāhia became the first woman to address Te Kotahitanga, the Māori Parliament. Her speech was groundbreaking—not only did she advocate for Māori women’s right to vote, but she also called for their right to stand for election, something the mainstream suffrage movement wasn’t even fighting for at the time. She argued that many Māori women were landowners and decision-makers within their own communities but lacked the political power to protect their interests. In the face of ongoing colonial dispossession, securing representation wasn’t just about gender equality—it was about ensuring the survival of Māori as a people.
Meri’s efforts helped Māori women win the right to vote in Te Kotahitanga elections in 1897. However, the Māori Parliament itself was never fully recognized by the colonial government and was eventually dismantled in the early 1900s, limiting the impact of these gains. Meanwhile, when Māori men were granted the right to vote in New Zealand’s national elections in 1867, they were only allowed to vote in separate Māori electorates, a system that remained in place for Māori voters—including women—after 1893. This meant that while all women in New Zealand gained the right to vote that year, Māori women’s political participation remained constrained by structural inequalities that continued long after suffrage was won.
Despite her contributions, Meri Te Tai Mangakāhia’s legacy is often overshadowed. Even within New Zealand, her name is far less known than that of Kate Sheppard, the leader of the Pākehā suffrage movement. This marginalization is reflected in the country’s national suffrage memorial in Christchurch, where Meri is the only Māori woman depicted—positioned at the side of the five Pākehā suffragists.
This raises a broader question: whose stories do we center when we talk about progress? The fight for women’s political rights didn’t look the same everywhere, and in many places, it wasn’t a unified movement. The voices of Indigenous women, women of color, and those advocating outside mainstream feminist spaces are still often pushed to the margins.
Meri Te Tai Mangakāhia’s story is a reminder that (feminist) history is more complex than the dominant narratives suggest. Whose stories do you think deserve more recognition?
Sources: About Meri Te Tai Mangakāhia 1. https://tanzecampus.neocities.org/fansite/about 2. https://www.penguin.co.nz/articles/3201-kia-kaha-profile---meri-te-tai-mangakahia About the Māori parliament 3. https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/2m30/mangakahia-meri-te-tai
Further reading: “Māori Women and the Vote” by Tania Rei, 1993, Wellington, N.Z. : Huia Publishers ISBN 090897504X