Documents
Research
papers, case studies, situationers and other documents on women, their
rights and their involvement in politics, governance and decision-making
Report on
the state of women in urban local government (2002)
New Zealand’s first woman MP was elected to parliament in 1933. By that
time, however, there had already been several women elected to local
government seats. The first was in 1893 and interestingly enough she
was a woman mayor. Elizabeth Yates was elected mayor of Onehunga, a
borough council in the Auckland area, in 1893 and the following year
Amelia Matson became a councillor on the Parnell borough, also in that
area. But progress was slow. By 1918 there were 3 women councillors
and by 1927 there were 5. It was not until the 1940s that the numbers
doubled.29 Table 8 compares the numbers of women elected to each level
of government and the percentage of seats they have gained in the last
40 years. BACK TO TOP
It is often claimed that women will only impact upon political decisions
once they achieve a critical mass within legislative bodies. This
paper outlines the expectations in existing critical mass literature
and tests these using the New Zealand House of Representatives as
a case study. What the New Zealand case highlighted was the number
of complexities that are ignored in critical mass literature and the
likelihood that different critical masses are necessary dependent
on the outcome sought. Download this PDF
document. BACK
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While a significant amount of research seeks to explain the comparative
number of women in national legislatures, there is little research
that examines the effects of women's leadership of political parties
on voting behaviour. This paper brings together research on leadership
effects in parliamentary elections and female candidate effects in
legislative races. Ideological, structural, and situational differences
between men and women have been used to explain gender gaps in voting.
We explore an alternative explanation - gender identity. When women
candidates are present, the gender identity hypothesis assumes that
women voters are more likely to choose women candidates because of
gender. While this hypothesis has been tested in legislative races,
it has not been applied to party leaders in parliamentary elections.
This paper find that leadership evaluations affect vote choice across
all countries but the effects of gender and the combined effects of
gender and leadership differ across countries.
New Zealand's 'new-girl network' at the top (2000)
When Jenene Crossan-Nicholls, the 20-something editor of NZ Girl,
a locally based online magazine, considers the kinds of celebrities
her audience might want to read about these days, she hasn't much
to say about snake-hipped fashion models or bubblegum singers. It's
the nation's leading bureaucrats and politicians she talks about.
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Women's educational attainment has steadily increased over the last
decade. The proportion of women of working age with a post-school
qualification has increased from 28.6% to 37% between 1987 and 1996.
Nonetheless, a significant gender gap remains, with the percentage
of working age men with post-school qualifications rising from 40.1%
to 47.1% over the same period. The rise in the number of women receiving
a post-school qualification is underpinned by the rising percentage
of girls staying longer at school and reaching higher educational
levels. The improvement has been such that by the mid-1990s the girls'
average achievement levels were higher than the boys'.
Documents on women's suffrage in New Zealand:
Not
a privilege but a right: a brief history of the women's suffrage movement
in New Zealand
Celebrating
Women's Suffrage 106 Years On (1999)
Women's Suffrage
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