A little-known fact:
For fifty years New Zealand women wanting to enrol to vote in the country’s general elections were required to state their marital status, rather than fill in their occupation as men did.
From 1905 to 1954, women had to tell the rest of the world, or at least anyone perusing the electoral rolls, whether they were married, a widow, or a spinster. Any woman “unfortunate” enough to have divorced, was expected to register the status of “spinster”.
How this happened is a story told in the changing schedules of the various Electoral Acts and electoral regulations, with very little discussion in the newspapers, or questioning on the part of the general public. But it meant that extraordinary women were reduced on paper to how they met societal expectation around marriage, rather than being recognised for the contributions they made to their communities as (paid for) working women.
The upcoming exhibition on the Tuakiri | Identity floor of Tūranga will introduce you to some of these women and what they achieved regardless of their marital status, but for the moment, let’s take a closer look at that legislation and how it all came to be.
The good old days of ‘93
The funny thing is, when women first registered to vote after the Women’s Suffrage Act of 1893 was passed, they could put down their occupations. In some of the early electoral rolls we have tailoresses, milliners, schoolteachers, and even female pork butchers.
The Electoral Act 1893 notes in detail the qualifications to vote and the electoral process. The one exception to women’s participation in the democratic process was very explicit:
No woman, although duly registered as an elector, shall be capable of being nominated as a candidate, or of being elected a member of the House of Representatives, or of being appointed to the Legislative Council; and every nomination-paper of a woman as a candidate shall be absolutely void and of no effect, and shall be rejected by the Returning Officer without question.
However, the privacy of an individual’s vote is made very clear – you can almost hear the underlying instruction to women that they didn’t have to tell their husband or father or brother for whom they voted. For most of the Act, the language used defaults to the male – he, his, him - but in this little clause the right of a woman to her own opinion is spelt out.
No person shall, directly or indirectly, induce any voter to display his or her ballot-paper after he or she shall have marked the same, so as to make known to any person the name of the candidate for or against whom he or she has so marked his or her vote.
The devil is in the detail, aka the First Schedule
The Schedules of an act lay out the practicalities of newly passed legislation. In 1893 the Form of Claim for Enrolment looked like this:
By tracking the subtle but important changes in the wording of the schedules, in particular the first schedules, we can see the shift from acknowledging that a woman could work and have an occupation, to labelling her by her marital status.
Sir Joseph Ward and his cohorts’ stealth moves
The 1902 Electoral Act consolidated sixteen different Acts of Parliament into one piece of legislation that regulated the conduct of elections. At this time the question of a woman’s occupation remained the same as in the 1893 legislation.
But first intimations of the change came in a report in the Waikato Times, with the suggestion that this addition would make the rolls of much greater use. (Maybe potentially a little stalkery, making the marital status of a woman publicly available?)
The following year Sir Joseph Ward introduced several bills proposing amendments to the electoral act. The third version of the bill inserted a subtle change in the proposed First Schedule. Without discussion, just an example of how an electoral roll would appear, and where women were designated spinster, married or widow.
At this point it should probably be noted that it is impossible to pin down just who was responsible for the changes to the schedules, but as the bill was sponsored by Sir Joseph Ward, later Prime Minister of New Zealand, he gets to carry the can.
You’re a woman - you can’t be an MHR; you’re dead – you can’t vote!
By the time of the 1904 Electoral Bill the focus appears to have been on other matters, such as making sure women knew they weren’t eligible to be elected to the House of Representatives and making sure that a woman on the roll who subsequently married, changed her name to that of her husband. There was also a concern about dead people remaining on the roll, so to thwart what was referred to as the “necropolitan vote” measures were put in place to ensure the prompt removal of names of recently deceased voters.
However, the powers that be back-peddled a leetle bit in the Electoral Amendment Bill of 1904. The First Schedule asked for “Occupation or addition” i.e. marital status but gave the same electoral roll example as in the 1903 example – married, widow, spinster. Interestingly, (or at least interesting to those not averse to plunging the depths of the New Zealand Historical Bills Collection) the final pages of the bill listed a “Memorandum Showing Changes From Existing Law”. No mention of the spinster, married, widow change…
No one fought the law…and the law won
Form 1 of the First Schedule of the Electoral Act 1905 laid it out very plainly. Question no. 9 on occupation has an explanatory note (in fine print) – In the case of female elector insert “Spinster,” “Married,” or “Widow.” And cautions that anyone making a false declaration commits perjury “and is punishable accordingly.”
One amendment later and this had been modified to Any person making a false declaration is liable to a fine not exceeding twenty pounds, or to three months’ imprisonment. The bill was passed into law on 29 September 1906.
“The Fight for Lovely Woman’s Rights”
Looking at the wider context of the electoral reforms from 1904-05 it seems that the main focus of the advocates for women’s rights was winning representation in parliament as well as addressing social injustices related to the inequality of women. One newspaper commentary noted that the National Council of Women was meeting in Christchurch, or as the writer put it, “the National Council of the sex was fulminating on the subject in the City of the Plains.”
In response to the Council asserting absolute equality of the sexes “in respect of all powers, rights, privileges and duties” the same writer contended if this was correct “it was high time for lovely woman to shoulder a rifle and walk into the firing line.”
So, although to modern eyes the requirements of the Claim for Enrolment form can be seen to belittle women, this was acceptable, or at least of less importance to the women of 1905. They still had bigger battles to fight.
You’re a woman, so it must be your fault
There was remarkably little commentary in the newspapers on the change. The odd letter to the editor would crop up objecting to the pigeon-holing of women, but most of the articles on the subject were written from a lofty male superiority, sympathising with the poor registrars who were being overwhelmed with incorrectly filled out application forms because women would insist on putting in their occupation instead of their marital status.
One report considered that women still regarded marriage as their “only real occupation” and if they didn’t, they should have had their occupation correctly listed.
And so it went on. Elizabeth Reid McCombs, New Zealand’s first woman Member of Parliament, was listed in the electoral rolls as “married”.
Mabel Bowden Howard, New Zealand’s first woman cabinet minister, was listed as “spinster.” And so many talented professional women were identified in this way for the next fifty years.
“Actual Occupation if Preferred”
Perhaps after fifty years it was beginning to sink in that there were more and more women in the work force, and perhaps this should be acknowledged in the electoral enrolment process. Amid other electoral reform and concerns about the country quota and Māori representation as the urban drift became a reality, a change was quietly introduced in the Electoral Regulations 1954. Under “Occupation” a female applicant was to state “Spinster, “Married,” “Widow” or actual occupation if preferred.
They were doing so well…
Oops.
In those same Electoral Regulations, the Notification of Death form reverted to the old ways.
Then in 1956 the Electoral Act was passed to include a number of changes to reform and update the process, and the form to enrol was quietly dropped, actual occupation and all.
But the Notification of Death “oops” is a little red flag all of its own. For years notifications of probates were advertised in the newspapers with the addition of “Spinster,” “Married” or “Widow”. Then the “Spinster” label disappeared around 1975. “Married” took longer to go, in 1993, but “Widow” hung on until 1997.
Visit Spinster, Married, Widow, a pop-up exhibition on Tuakiri | Identity Floor in Tūranga from 19 September to 14 February 2027.
Add a comment to: Spinster, Married, Widow or “When your marital status is your job (for voting purposes)”