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Story: Voting rights

Suffrage cartoons: family disaster

This 1893 cartoon depicts a harassed husband struggling to prepare dinner and manage the children, while a lordly wife sweeps in, fresh from a busy day dealing with the world’s business. Such was the disruption to the natural order of life foretold by those opposed to women’s suffrage.

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Alexander Turnbull Library

Reference: 1/2-031495; F

Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any re-use of this image.

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How to cite this page

Neill Atkinson, Voting rights – Votes for women, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/zoomify/36437/suffrage-cartoons-family-disaster (accessed 4 June 2026).

Story by Neill Atkinson, published 1 June 2012.