In 1926 Kirk was one of the first four Wellington women to be appointed justice of the peace. She had been president of the Wellington branch of the National Council of Women of New Zealand for several years, and from 1934 to 1937 was president of the national body.
Morison left behind an important legacy, not only as a trade unionist, but also as a feminist. She provides an example of the strong connections between women workers and the battle for women’s rights in New Zealand. Her belief that women had a duty to care for the morals of society as well as a right to be protected from its evils extended into her approach to trade unionism.
Hertha Ayrton was an engineer and mathematician. She was awarded the Royal Society’s Hughes Medal, and is well known as a suffragette.
Dorothea Beale studied at Queen’s College, London where she became the first female mathematics tutor. She became Principal of Cheltenham Ladies’ College and a founder of St Hilda’s College, Oxford.
Anna Howard Shaw (1847-1919), an American suffragist leader, minister and physician.
Mary Colclough was a highly controversial public figure for a few years only, but she jolted the people of Auckland by fundamentally challenging contemporary assumptions and values about woman’s place in New Zealand society.
An influential Auckland citizen with a reputation as a compelling speaker, writer, administrator and social activist
Famously referred to as “the woman who was ahead of the women who were ahead of their time,” author, activist, and lecturer Matilda Joslyn Gage worked tirelessly to advocate for abolition, women’s rights, and Native American rights.
Jessie Rooke was a leader in both the temperance and suffrage campaigns in Tasmania, where the legislature enacted the women’s vote in 1903, the year after the passage of the Commonwealth Franchise Act.
Physician and zoologist Clara Weekes was the first woman to earn a doctorate of science at the University of Sydney, and a long-time advocate for women’s rights.