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As a positive twist, women got the vote in New Zealand partly because of fears that a surplus of rowdy men 'on the frontier' would cause problems. Giving women
by geoffmunn 8y ago
As a positive twist, women got the vote in New Zealand partly because of fears that a surplus of rowdy men 'on the frontier' would cause problems.
Giving women the vote would give families more leverage in Parliament.
- jacobush 8y agoFears by who(m)? There must be some interesting partisan politics you are barely hinting at.
- geoffmunn 8y agohttps://theconversation.com/why-new-zealand-was-the-first-country-where-women-won-the-right-to-vote-103219 https://theconversation.com/why-new-zealand-was-the-first-co... Women as moral citizens As a “colonial frontier”, New Zealand had a surplus of men, especially in resource towns. Pragmatically, this placed a premium on women for their part as wives, mothers and moral compasses. There was a fear of a chaotic frontier full of marauding single men. This colonial context saw conservative men who supported family values supporting suffrage. During the 1880s, depression and its accompanying poverty, sexual licence and drunken disorder further enhanced women’s value as settling maternal figures. Women voters promised a stabilising effect on society.
- ThinkingGuy 8y agoWe had a similar phenomenon in the US, with the "frontier" territories being among the first places to allow women to vote (at the local level), years before US Constitution was ammended to make it nation-wide. https://constitutioncenter.org/timeline/html/cw08_12159.html https://constitutioncenter.org/timeline/html/cw08_12159.html