Campaigning Kate

How a determined woman of Scottish descent led the battle for votes for women in New Zealand, and sought equality for all

- KENNY MacASKILL

JACINDA ARDERN, New Zealand's 40th Prime Minister, came to prominence during the Covid pandemic with her early and firm lockdown of her country; that along with her dignified handling of a terrorist atrocity in Christchurch.

She was not the first female Prime Minister of New Zealand - both Jenny Shipley and Helen Clark had preceded her in that office - but she was the youngest female head of government anywhere in the world.

New Zealand, notably, was the first country to give the electoral franchise to women in 1893.

It's often said in politics that you stand on the shoulders of giants, and there's no doubt that all three former female premiers would acknowledge those who went before them. One woman in particular, though, is seen as the leading light in New Zealand's female suffrage movement, her face adorning both the $10 note and a commemorative stamp.

This is the story of Kate Sheppard, the second child and daughter of Andrew Malcolm and Jemima Souter, who married in the Inner Hebrides in 1842. Her father was involved in variety of trades and the family moved about across the whole of Britain.

Her elder sister Marie was born in Scotland, but Liverpool was the birthplace of Kate in 1848, and London and Birmingham for younger siblings.

Her father died suddenly in 1862 and Kate was sent to stay with an uncle in Nairn who was a Free Church Minister. That would seem to have been the genesis of her lifelong commitment to Christian Socialism, as well as rooting her in her parents' native land.

Christened Catherine Wilson Malcolm, she always spelled her first name with a K and shortened it to Kate, and it is as Kate that she is remembered and revered.