Suffrage Celebration 12-1, Tuesday, 19 September, Kate Sheppard Memorial in Ōtautahi Christchurch

Mayoress Chrissy Mauger

Over 100 people attended this outdoor event which was organised in collaboration with the Christchurch City Council and Plains FM.

Liz Kereru and Maaka Tau welcomed everyone with a Mihi Whakatau on behalf of Ngāi Tūāhuriri. This was followed by presentations from Chrissy Mauger, Mayoress of Christchurch, Tania Wati, Ngāi Tūāhuriri representative on Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu and Helen Osborne, Property Manager, Te Whare Waiutuutu - Kate Sheppard House. Nancy McShane, Public Service Association representative, delivered a speech written about Kate Sheppard.

Nancy McShane, Public Service Association

Sunita Gautam, Community Board Member, Central Ward, spoke about the importance of diversity and inclusion in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Sunita Guatam, Community Board Member, Central Ward

The event concluded with the singing of ‘True Colours’ by the Rangi Ruru School Choir and attendees left white camellias on the memorial.

Rangi Ruru School Choir

TV1 filmed the event and a few minutes of footage was shown in a TV1 One News 6 pm news item on 130 th anniversary of women’s suffrage in New Zealand. The presenters were recorded by Plains FM and an edited version of this recording, which includes comments from those attending the event, was broadcast on 20 September and 24 September. Funding from Manatū Wāhine was obtained for koha for the Mihi Whakatau and for the recording of the event by Plains FM and the creator of the edited podcast. 

NCWNZ Ōtautahi Christchurch Branch and Students Against Sexual Harm (SASH) at Christchurch Girls’ High School (CGHS) collaborated to hold an action workshop for high school students in Greater Christchurch at Tūranga Library in central Christchurch 4-6 pm on Tuesday 11 May 2023. The workshop was attended by twenty students from five different high schools, as well as two representatives of the Empowerment Trust, two counsellors from one of the schools attending, and NCWNZ Ōtautahi Christchurch Branch members who had worked with students to organise the workshop. The eight male students who attended were from three different high schools (one a high school for boys); the others were female students, overwhelmingly from two large girls’ schools in the city.

After a welcome, and some information about SASH, students were engaged in small group discussion of workshop questions with two breaks for refreshments and informal talk. There was a lively buzz throughout the two hours and a group photo was taken at the end. 

SASH Workshop Attendees at Tūranga Library, 11 May 2023. Image courtesy of NCWNZ Ōtautahi Christchurch Branch.

Nearly a hundred people gathered at the Kate Sheppard National Memorial on 19 September 2022 to celebrate Suffrage Day in Ōtautahi Christchurch. Pointing toward the women portrayed in the monument, the keynote speaker, Mayor Lianne Dalziel, urged everyone to honour the historic activists by getting out and voting at midterm elections. (See the Otago Daily Times video of the event here.)

National Council of Women Ōtautahi Christchurch Branch was approached by four Year 8 students (12-13 year olds) from Mt Pleasant School in Ōtautahi Christchurch for support in running some sessions with young children at their school, around gender equity issues.

The girls had chosen gender equity as a year-long topic for a programme of study that is a primary school version of the International Baccalaureate (IB) programme. The four girls had already painted the toilets at the school (which had been blue for boys and pink for girls) green, and had discarded a raft of picture books in the school library that were too obviously gender specific and had set new rules with the Board of Trustees for future book buying.

National Council of Women Ōtautahi Christchurch Branch is working with Christchurch Girls High School (CGHS) around the idea of setting up an affiliated youth branch at the school. CGHS senior students have already been active in supporting issues that affect young women, in particular, around issues of sexual harassment. This call to action came about as a result of the 2021 survey that was carried out at the school by researcher, Dr Liz Gordon of Pūkeko Research Ltd (download the .pdf file of the report here). The responses to the survey showed that there was significant, ongoing sexual harassment being experienced by the majority of students of all ages at the school.

Senior students at CGHS have since set up a group called SASH (Students Against Sexual Harm) which operates both in their school and in some other Canterbury schools. 

Louise Tapper of the NCWNZ Ōtautahi Christchurch Branch (assisted by Rosemary Du Plessis) led the "Making the Most of Now" project that documented the COVID-19 pandemic experiences of thirteen young women in Ōtautahi Christchurch.

Podcasts based on the interviews were broadcast on Plains FM Community Radio in July and August of 2021. Now four short videos based on these interviews and featuring three of the participants in this research are available on the NCWNZ Ōtautahi Christchurch YouTube channel. Funding for the video project was obtained last year from the Rata Foundation - an application from NCWNZ Ōtautahi Christchurch Branch. 

Members of the Christchurch NCWNZ are considering how to keep up awareness of the results of a sexual harassment survey undertaken at the request of the principal of Christchurch Girls' High School, Christine O'Neill.

Dr. Liz Gordon of Pūkeko Research Ltd. received an astounding 71% response rate from just over 1000 students aged 12 to 18. Most respondants were 16, and over 90% identified as female and nearly 75% as straight. Of the 430 respondants who indicated that they themselves had been sexually harassed, 381 reported they had (in total) experienced 2677 incidents of sexual harassment in the past year, averaging about seven incidents per student. Twenty respondents indicated that they had been raped.