65 quotes found
"Is it right that your mother, your sister... should be classed with criminals and lunatics... ? Is it right that while the gambler, the drunkard, and even the wife-beater has a vote, earnest, educated and refined women are denied it?... Is it right... that a mother... should be thought unworthy of a vote that is freely given to the blasphemer, the liar, the seducer,and the profligate?"
"The news is being flashed far and wide, and before our earth has revolved on her axis every civilized community within the reach of the electric wires will have received the tidings that civic freedom has been granted to the women of New Zealand. … It does not seem a great thing to be thankful for, that the gentlemen who confirm the laws which render women liable to taxation and penal servitude have declared us to be "persons"… We are glad and proud to think that even in so conservative a body as the Legislative Council there is a majority of men who are guided by the principles of reason and justice, who desire to see their womenkind treated as reasonable beings, and who have triumphed over prejudice, narrow-mindedness and selfishness."
"In Wellington is every year assembled a National Council of men, which holds a session lasting several months... From that Council women are excluded. … Under these circumstances a National Council which largely represents the thinking and working women of the colony (and which, it may be remarked, costs the country nothing) becomes a necessity. I trust the day is not far distant … when the necessity for men's councils and women's councils, as such, will be swept away."
"All that separates, whether of race, class, creed, or sex, is inhuman, and must be overcome."
"We are tired of having a 'sphere' doled out to us, and of being told that anything outside that sphere is 'unwomanly'. We want to be natural just for a change … we must be ourselves at all risks."
"Girls can do anything. We do do anything and we expect to be treated as equals."
"If ordinary means I have suddenly got to produce a household of kids and iron Peter's shirts, I'm sorry, I'm not interested."
"I believe I'm the best person for the job. Obviously I'm a woman, but I've never sought election on the basis of being a woman. I've always sought election as the best person for the job."
"People weren’t used to the prospect of a woman becoming prime minister so there were attacks about my appearance, my voice and even my clothing. But I found that there was little point dwelling on such criticism. I just had to look straight ahead and get on with the task at hand and, by and large, that strategy worked for me. I think women politicians today are more confident in being able to call out such behaviour than I was at a time when it was very rare to have many women in parliament."
"The carrot is a happy and harmonious society, the only stick is shame."
"We have a lot of issues to sort through, most of them because of the pandemic. 11 million girls have not returned to school since 2020 and that’s a problem we should solve. I believe in Women Deliver’s ability to build solidarity and find solutions while sticking to the themes,”"
"This happens...people coming in from South Auckland get to Mount Albert right?...and the thing it's like, hopefully, we could divert some of that traffic and criminals away from Mount Albert..."
"I am not expecting to win"
"I am expecting to come second, at least...I am not putting in all these hours and putting up with media trying to come second, I am not...I am trying to win this damn thing."
"Is @jacindaardern willing to denounce this legislation of child sexual abuse?"
"To the best of my ability I tried to do some good, tried to make people's lives better in whatever way I could? Without sounding sanctimonious about it. Perhaps just that I tried not to do any harm."
"I would hope that we’re not going to be, on the one hand, encouraging young people into a healthy lifestyle, and at the same time promoting a way of life that is demonstrably unhealthy."
"I hope we’ll have as much pride as the Americans had, but I don’t think it’ll be done in quite the same way. It’s not our style to let everything hang out."
"Dame Cath was a true trailblazer for women in public life."
"What we've seen though, with more people naturalising te reo Māori and te reo Māori faces and our public broadcasting spaces and our public spaces, is that it is confronting some people's status quo and people need to understand that shifting your status quo and what you thought it meant to be a New Zealander, is not going to be as fearful as you're making it out to be. That embracing our country, our past, is the only way that we can have a more connected and cohesive united future together."
"Trans people are tired of being oppressed and discriminated."
"I am a violence prevention minister, and I know what causes violence in this world and it’s white cis men."
"Now it's become more political about whether what she said was appropriate or whether what she experienced was right ... where we sit is we acknowledge the pain of our whānau who have had to survive violence."
"Not one more acre."
"Let us all remember that the Treaty was signed so that we could all live as one nation in Aotearoa."
"She was the person that galvanised all the array of different issues, opinions, claims, angsts that different communities had had around alienation of land, loss of authority and she really encapsulated that into the march and the term not one more acre."
"Dame Whina was very strong willed and believed in fighting for things that benefited Maori. She didn't care who was in power, but believed that not one more acre of land should be alienated from Māori without Māori consent."
"Hastings is a great place to do business and we are proactively attracting new business to the District and supporting existing businesses. We are managing growth well, through an efficient, effective maintained infrastructure programme. We have land available for development, a secure water supply and fertile growing soils. We are investing"
"This year will see significant projects for safeguarding our drinking water including the construction of Waiaroha (the water storage and education centre), the Frimley water storage and treatment facility and the completion of seven of our small community’s water infrastructure installations"
"Major growth infrastructure projects will continue for our roads, cycleways, footpaths and significant housing milestones are approaching such as the start of our Hastings Medium Term Housing Strategy with our partners, government and iwi and Hastings’ first spatial plan."
"Upon her reception to the Wellington women's branch of the Labour Party: "The women of New Zealand have at last arrived,""
"I am a very ordinary type of woman, but I can get on with all women, irrespective of their political outlook."
"Regarding her father, Edwin John Howard, a member of the Canterbury General Labourers' Union and Labour MP for Christchurch South:"I am what I am because of the training my father gave me,""
"I am going to work really hard to improve health conditions in New Zealand, because I think it is work which can best be handled by a woman."
"...in a better sanitary condition than any in the North Island."
"I think women are quite as well able to legislate as men..."
"I am most anxious to make a change in the way business is carried on. There is in both borough councils and in Parliament too, a great deal too much talk...Men often get up and talk at these meetings just to waste time..."
"No woman, however degraded, but should have women to look after them."
"Most emphatically I am not a prohibitionist."
"I would like to warn honourable members, however, that women are never satisfied unless they have their own way. It happens in this case that the woman’s way is the right way."
"Let us prove ourselves as good as any man, and better than some."
"There is no reason why a woman should not receive the same pay for the same work as a man. To argue otherwise is to argue against justice."
"Poverty is not the fault of the poor. It is the fault of a system that allows idleness at the top and starvation at the bottom."
"Forget I am a member of the Labour Party and remember that I am a woman"
"I do hope that the women of New Zealand will realise...I will be their representative first."
"Most New Zealanders are colourful and determined people, ambitious, forward looking, energetic and productive, caring and compassionate."
"We can't look back nostalgically as some are wont to do, to failed remedies of the past. We must keep up, keep going, keep progressing."
"Government programmes are making a positive difference, not a negative one. We must ask the right questions and expect answers."
"The Government knows that New Zealanders need a sense of certainty and security about their publicly funded health services. We all need to know that publicly funded services will be there when we need them."
"We have a record. We intend to deliver."
"Let this year be one where parties say what they stand for, not against. Let's get rid of the whingeing and weak criticism which occurs for the sake of it."
"The way to solve it is not necessarily becoming more liberal but rather trying to find ways that both educate, treat people who are clearly ill and deny access where that's possible."
"I don't think that we should try and beat history."
"This is an extraordinary set of circumstances that currently prevail. I think we must wait and see what occurs."
"I made a submission opposing the Civil Union legislation. Marriage is a civil and political right, and civil and political rights are not negotiable. You can't have half a right."
"It can also be rich and fulfilling."
"If you got this far, I want you to go on. Kia kaha tuahine - sister, be strong."
"I don't believe we shall ever be finished."
"The problems do not lie with female sport and leisure, but with the ways in which the male world and male sport creates and defines the ideological and material conditions that prescribe the female world. As in so much of life, it is time to stand back and object to incremental integration into the male world. Sport, recreation and leisure have a different meaning for women; we should act on the basis of our interpretation."
"And I start to dream - about the activities of women for temperance and the suffrage in this country, and about the activism of women for peace and disarmament; and I wonder if our great-grandmothers would have believed suffrage would be almost universal, and if we dare to dream of a world without nuclear weapons, without weapons, with peace."
"Running in all weathers. Running to the place of work. Running to despair. Running through the bottom door of the old building directly to the bathroom to be sick. Every day the same, and no way to control it. Every day my body saying, 'I can't stomach this anymore.'"
"I am still afraid of getting too tired, of giving up. I am still afraid of staying in the job, and afraid of leaving it."
"I want women to be politically aware all the time, in every conscious moment, in everything they do; and at the same time I know how exhausting it is to be so aware. I know how frustrating it is to feel so powerless. I know how it is to feel defeated before you start. But I want women to progress to a point where they recognise all the politics in their lives, to a point where the awareness is instinctive and need not be excessive, and to a point where they learn to choose political priorities, and to know that often there is not enough energy left for more than a patient observing."
"Women instinctively have the potential for a broader consciousness of politics than men. Our lives are more varied and less circumscribed. We do more things at any one time, in spite of the common myths, and generally have more responsibility."
"Those who can move from understanding the concerns of lower-paid urban omen workers in desperate need of child care to understanding isolated rural women at the end of metal roads who want extensions to bus routes; from noticing the absence of Maori explorers and pioneers from our history syllabus to observing that the same history is a record of only 49 per cent of the New Zealand population - these people are exceptional humans and rare souls in politics. Wherever they are found, they are more likely to be women."