Artist Margriet Windhausen Created 1993 | Type Stone and bronze Year 1993 | |
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Location Christchurch, New Zealand | ||
The Kate Sheppard National Memorial is located in the city of Christchurch, New Zealand. It is New Zealand's first memorial to the women's suffrage campaign, and particularly honours the life of one of the country's leading campaigners for women's suffrage, Kate Sheppard.
The idea for the memorial was raised in 1989 as part of plans to commemorate the 100th anniversary of women's suffrage in New Zealand in 1993. A committee was formed to select a design for the memorial, and the design of Dutch-born New Zealand artist Margriet Windhausen was chosen.
The memorial is a stone aggregate wall, with a life size bronze relief sculpture of Sheppard and five other women's suffrage leaders. Panels on either side of the sculpture depict scenes of everyday women's lives at the end of the nineteenth century, and also carry text describing the struggle for women's suffrage. The whole structure is approximately 5 metres wide and 2 metres tall.
The women featured in the sculpture are (from left to right) Helen Nicol, a women's suffrage campaigner from Dunedin; Sheppard; Ada Wells, a campaigner for girls' education; Harriet Morison, an advocate for working women, and also from Dunedin; Meri Te Tai Mangakāhia of Te Tai Tokerau, who approached the Kotahitanga (Māori Parliament) for women's suffrage; and Amey Daldy of the Auckland Woman's Christian Temperance Union. The group of women are depicted carrying their petition for women's suffrage to Parliament in a wooden cart.
The memorial was unveiled on 19 September 1993, the 100th anniversary of women's suffrage in New Zealand, by Dame Catherine Tizard, the Governor-General of New Zealand. A time capsule containing news articles and information on women's lives in 1993 was placed inside the monument.
The memorial is located in a landscaped area known as the Kate Sheppard National Memorial Reserve, beside the Avon River and adjacent to a heritage building, Our City. This building was damaged in the 2010 Canterbury earthquake and the memorial was behind barricades while the building was assessed. In a ceremony presided over by the Mayor of Christchurch, Lianne Dalziel, in June 2014, the memorial was liberated from the barricades and public access was restored.