Wellingtonian Henry Wright’s 1902 request that female political activists not call at his home repeated one of the commonest insults used by opponents of suffrage – that women involved in politics had masculine characteristics (were ‘epicene’). Wright lived till 1936, so he saw women get not only the vote, but the right to stand as candidates (1919), and the election of the first female member of Parliament, Elizabeth McCombs (1933).
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Alexander Turnbull Library
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Eph-B-WOMEN-1902
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