ABSTRACT
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries Australia and New Zealand were hailed as pioneers of women’s political rights and supported suffrage struggles elsewhere, particularly in the ‘home country’. In 1911 the wife of the Australian Prime Minister together with the wife of a former New Zealand Premier marched through the streets of London for women’s suffrage. But early achievement of rights in the Antipodes did not guarantee the presence of women in parliament, even as Hansard reporters. It was not until the 1990s that the two countries began to regain a pioneering reputation, Australia for its femocrats and New Zealand for its women political leaders. The patterns of convergence and divergence between Australia and New Zealand over the last 110 years tells us much about the specific obstacles to women’s political representation and the methods used to overcome those obstacles.
