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[DAME PATSY REDDY]: It's my privilege to exercise the prerogative of Her Majesty the Queen and open the 53rd Parliament.

[BARBARA McPHEE]: The 53rd Parliament has got the most woman MPs of any preceding parliament, but of course it hasn't always been that way. Women earned the right to vote in 1893, which was after eight years of campaigning and struggle. Kate Sheppard was the most famous women's suffragist, but of course she wasn't alone in that movement.

[LOUISA WALL]: Kate Sheppard, who everyone knows because she's on the $10 note. But also a woman called Meri Te Tai Mangakāhia. Meri spoke in the Kotahitanga Parliament and that was in 1891. So before we got the vote, Meri was already, within a Māori context, talking about women voting, women standing.

[JO HAYES]: It was not uncommon to have a Māori woman leading their iwi, and so they they cut the ground for all of us.

[NANAIA MAHUTA]: In Māori society there was a strong role for women to play in terms of developing land and supporting the development aspirations of their family. If there was going to be anywhere in the world that was going to give women equal rights, it should be New Zealand.

[GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN]: There was this anecdote about the suffrage movement and the meetings and somebody said, you know, 'Are we going too fast? Maybe we're pushing too fast for change and people aren't ready for this.' And somebody apparently stood up and said, 'Well, you know, some people have to run so others can walk.'

[SUE KEDGLEY]: Our parliament started its life as a sort of old-fashioned colonial men's club.

[ANNE TOLLEY]: The Grand Hall used to be the old billiard room and and the men used to play billiards because the men parliamentarians in the early days when there were no women here, they would come here for months on end. So it was a very very different place

[KATHERINE RICH]: It's only been just over 100 years where women have been able to stand for parliament at all. And in 1919 when women were given the right to stand, a group of women said we've got to put up some candidates. And so there were three magnificent women who stood, and they had a hell of a time standing. The meet the candidates meetings, according to the papers at the time, were so bad that they would be shouted down and couldn't even finish their speeches. Now of course, none of them were successful, and it took many many years before other women followed them.

[SUE KEDGLEY]: It was not until 1933 we had our first woman MP, Elizabeth McCombs. They had to stop referring to the members as gentlemen and they had to refer to them as members. And they had to take down the 'no ladies permitted' signs around Parliament. I mean, that's what it was like.

[RUTH DYSON]: Being the first must have been really, really hard. I remember seeing the press headline, 'Elizabeth McCombs, first woman member of Parliament, gets sworn in tomorrow - will she wear a hat?' [EXASPERATED SIGH AND LAUGHTER] So I often reflect on how hard that must have been to be a serious woman with lots of really big policy ambitions and to be trivialised like that, and she just put up with it. Elizabeth was also the first 'out' vegetarian in the New Zealand Parliament... and I was probably the second.

[BARBARA McPHEE]: Ruth was definitely one of the first vegetarian members of Parliament after Elizabeth McCombs, but our research suggests that there were probably several other vegetarian members of Parliament. Maybe not all of them have declared that.

[RUTH DYSON]: There might have been other closet vegetarians. But in a sort of farming dominated environment, probably people wouldn't mention that they didn't eat meat.

[BARBARA McPHEE]: Elizabeth McCombs was followed by Catherine Stewart in 1938, but it wasn't until Mabel Howard was elected that we saw our first woman cabinet minister. Whetu Tirikatene-Sullivan is another major figure in women's progression through Parliament. She was the second Māori woman MP to be elected to Parliament, and the first Māori woman cabinet minister.

[NANAIA MAHUTA]: I remember Whetu fondly. She was a member of the Rātana movement, the first Māori woman to be a minister in Cabinet. Definitely a trendsetter in terms of fashion during the time - proud to be a Māori woman, and represented that in the clothes that she wore. There are a number of legacy leaders, certainly, that you can draw inspiration from within Parliament, like Iriaka Rātana and Whetu Tirikatene. Story has it that back in the day when the House used to sit into the late hours of the night, Iriaka was very, very sick - was in the Lobby, very, very sick - but was here out of duty to be able to place her vote personally. So, you know, these are the stories I heard when I came in about my predecessors.

[NICOLA GRIGG]: My great-grandmother Mary Grigg, her husband was the MP for Mid-Canterbury. Fought in both world wars and got killed in Libya in 1941. And so she stood uncontested and won the seat, and so she then became National's first female member of Parliament. So that's been a huge inspiration to me, and that's why I have her picture on my wall here, because every now and then when I think, 'oh, what am I doing? I can't do this,' I think, 'if she could do it, you know, a newly widowed mother of three, living down in Canterbury and getting on a boat and coming up here for a month at a time or six weeks at a time - if she can do it, I can do it'.

[SUE KEDGLEY]; And even by 1970 there had only ever been 11 women in our Parliament, and it was only when the women's movement challenged the whole way of thinking and the way women were perceived in the world and fought for equality that we started in the Seventies to get more women running and being elected into Parliament. And then finally we started discussing women's issues in Parliament.

[GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN]: I particularly love Marilyn Waring. There's this incredible photo of her in the National Party caucus as the only woman and she's this tiny figure. But she was willing to cross the House. So she came with all of this principle and she brought representation to life in this place, because she wasn't willing to kind of just vote along party lines when it wasn't the right thing to do.

[MARILYN WARING]: In 1981 the overall election result wasn't confirmed, and as I was walking down the television screen was announcing that Fran Wilde had just won Wellington Central and I let out a huge whoop of joy. [LAUGHS] And the National Party women standing in the doorway turned around and said, 'But Marilyn! She's Labour!' and I just said, 'look, if there aren't more women in there, I'll leave. I just can't stand this anymore.'

[FRAN WILDE]: For me, I had these three little kids, and obviously childcare was going to be a pretty big issue. So while I was in Parliament I had an arrangement with two or three wonderful young women, and Ruth Dyson was one of them, who came and lived with me in turn as a member of the family, and they were there when I had to be here. And I could not have done this job without that sort of support. We certainly worked across the House on those issues that were important for us. So violence against women, rape laws and abortion tended to produce a degree of activism from the women in both caucuses.

[MARILYN WARING]: Doug Kidd tried to introduce a Status of Unborn Children Act, but the night before Ann Hercus had come beetling into my office. She handed it to me. I said, 'well, we know what we've got to do - we're just going to put up another bill that's completely the opposite, you know, because we know what they'll all do then, they'll just vote them both down.' So it was probably about 10:30 I went racing down to the Clerk's Office. I said, 'Just draft a bill! It's just a woman's right to choose! I don't care what it says!' And by midnight i had a bill. And so in caucus the next day Kidd was there to tell everybody that he had taken it upon himself to introduce this bill. I remember standing up and fighting it, and then I stood up and said, 'Well, there'll just have to be two then.' And Muldoon said, 'Oh, Miss Waring, but you have to have a bill.' 'Yes, I've got a bill,' I said, and so they were both voted out within two hours. This is the photo of all the women who'd voted together to get rid of Kidd's bill, and I thought it was a really great shot.

[MARYAN STREET]: Helen Clark and I approached Tariana Turia to see whether she would be prepared to run for Labour. She was. And she became a minister. She took that influence and applied it for the benefit of wahine Māori. I was chairing the selection panel that chose Nanaia Mahuta way back then in the '90s, and I am so proud of that. And that's about influence.

[NANAIA MAHUTA]: I was really young, I think I'd just maybe turned 26. I'm the third Māori woman to represent a Māori electorate and the first Māori woman to be a Minister of Māori Development - which was a portfolio previously held by men - and the first Māori woman to wear a moko kauae into Parliament. It's funny, the first question you get was, 'oh, was it sore?' So the immediate reaction was kind of to the literal, 'ooh', you know, 'getting a tattoo on your chin must be really sore.' But actually people throughout Parliament, my colleagues across the House, embraced the moko kauae, and it's now normalised within our Parliament, so I feel really fortunate that we're breaking down barriers in terms of how people perceive facial tattoos.

[RUTH DYSON]: I came in in the last First Past the Post election, and then 1996 was our first MMP election, and immediately I noticed this amazing change in the diversity of our members of Parliament.

[MELISSA LEE]: Being the first Korean woman to be elected into the New Zealand Parliament is an absolute honour. It took a long time for the first ever Asian person to be elected. That was Hon Pansy Wong and opened the doors for all of us. And I think when people realise that New Zealand is in fact a diverse country, it is actually a multicultural country, and there are so many other diverse women and we need to actually celebrate that.

[PARMJEET PARMAR] It's a real privilege to be the first Indian-born woman New Zealand member of Parliament. I'm really proud of the way various ethnicities live together side by side here in New Zealand.

[GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN]: When I was elected - and it was a little bit of a surprise to me - I ended up becoming the very first refugee to be elected into New Zealand's parliament. I realise that means a lot, too, to the people who've never had a voice, and that's what this place is about.

[PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN] We're an incredibly diverse country. We have 213 ethnicities, people who collectively speak 160 languages, and so when we make changes to make parliament more attractive we need to take that into account as well. For example, when I stood for the first time for an electorate seat and had the issue of billboards, I was told by well-meaning people that with my last name Radhakrishnan people weren't going to vote for me, and so there was some pressure to change and adopt my husband's last name - which is not much shorter but is an Anglo-Saxon name. I spoke to to someone who was in Parliament at the time who said to me one thing. Because I didn't want to do it but I sort of had this pressure, and for a fleeting moment considered it. And so I talked to this now a colleague of mine, who said, 'how would that make you feel?' And for me it was clear would make me feel like a sellout. She's now the prime minister [LAUGHS] And so I didn't do that. But I think we do need to be mindful of being inclusive if we're truly going to be a House of Representatives.

[KATHERINE RICH] When I came to Parliament in 1999 there were more comments about the way I looked and the way I dressed rather than anything I said, and at that time I think there was trial by wardrobe for women. It was really challenging when I brought my babies to Parliament. When I had my two children unfortunately it became part of the political discussion about whether it was fine to take time off when I had my babies. In terms of the parliamentary rules I was treated as an MP with a disability, technically - that was the category that I fell under when I took time off after the birth of my two babies. I was based in Dunedin, which meant that with flights and everything, it was very challenging. And I think one of the turning points for me was getting up very early to go to Parliament and one of my children getting very upset that Mummy was leaving and doing one of those slow motion runs down the driveway, and I thought, no, after nine years, despite my party at that point going into government, that it was time for me to retire. So it's very funny to retire when you're 40, but I knew that I wanted to continue working and do other things.

[MOANA MACKEY]: I left Parliament when I was 41. Didn't have children. The number of people who would make comments around, 'well, you really can't understand the importance of family if you don't have children,' and I'd say, 'but I still have a family!' You don't have to have children to love children, to understand how important it is that we protect them, and you certainly don't need to have children to understand the importance and value of family. That constantly surprised me. But it was a constant refrain, particularly on issues like civil unions or the section 59 legislation. It was just like, no children, no right to comment. I once got an email from someone who actually said to me, you know, 'you haven't used your uterus as God intended, therefore I'm not going to listen to what you have to say and you shouldn't be in the decision-making position in our country.' And I remember just sitting at my desk and thinking, 'wow, it never even occurred to me that God had a grand plan for my womb that I wasn't aware of.' It's like, who needs the extra added pressure? But it was just kind of ridiculous. But that's what you face when you're a woman and when people feel like they have a right to comment on your life choices, that men just - it doesn't seem to me like they have to face the same pressure.

[ANNE TOLLEY]: My mentor and someone I admired tremendously was Jenny Shipley. She was the Minister of Social Welfare when I very first met her, and I'll never forget it because I was Deputy Mayor of Napier City and we had a women and local government conference, the very first ever, and she was our guest speaker and there were protesters who were actually banging on the glass doors and windows, protesting over things that she'd done in her portfolio. And I really admired the way that she kept her cool. She kept her focus. But she did acknowledge that her actions were difficult, that she had struggled with them, and she showed us that in power you need to understand the consequences of that power. And from that time on I watched her career. And of course then she gave me the opportunity to come to Parliament as a list MP while she was Prime Minister. And of course she turned out to be New Zealand's first woman Prime Minister

[JUDITH COLLINS]: I look at Jenny Shipley, first Prime Minister of New Zealand who was a woman. Jenny is someone who paved the way for other women. Helen Clark from another party, she also paved the way for other women. I think too, part of what I have to do as a woman who is also a leader is to not shut other women down - to actually allow other women to come through. Yeah, it's robust, yes, it's tough, yes, people do criticise you as a woman for all sorts of things. You get called out on your clothes, on your weight, on your age and on various things, but actually it can also be very rewarding if we can just try and ignore it and just keep on going and remember why we're here.

[MARGARET WILSON]: I was always admiring of women like Ann Hercus in in the fourth Labour Government, the way she managed her ministerial roles in difficult positions. And of course my friend Helen Clark. I'd observed her over a number of years, the way in which she in fact managed difficult situations politically.

[MARYAN STREET]: Helen became leader of the Labour Party at a difficult time. We'd had a huge defeat in 1993. There was certainly an anti-women agenda. But Helen came through that. And even when she became leader it was an uphill battle, with some of her colleagues coming to her and saying to her, 'Helen, I think you need to stand down, we're not doing well in the polls, it's not going well.' She stared them down and went on to become extremely popular, and she became the first elected woman Prime Minister. And that kind of scrutiny that she got about what she wore and how she looked and whether she should have worn trousers when she met the Queen. I mean really and truly. And now we we move on and we look at Jacinda, and she is of a different era, she's of a different generation, and she comes with a different life experience, some of which has been paved for her by Helen.

[JENNY MARCROFT]: The Prime Minister that we have, Jacinda Ardern, she is showing not just to New Zealand but to the world that there is a different way of being a leader.

[TRACEY MARTIN]: Yeah, and I think the 15th of March, those two things - and she's been criticised, it's really interesting, people who criticise someone for being kind as if that is a weakness - but if you look at the 15th of March she took actions with regard to going down to Christchurch and going to visit the widows and so on. She gives people hugs. Actually, that's not a weakness, to give somebody a hug, right? But then the next day or within that following week after an emergency cabinet meeting, she announced gun reform. So there's that juxtaposition. She didn't have to give up that innate sense of caring and kindness and so on in that moment to be strong and to be a leader in that moment.

[JUDITH COLLINS]: During the election campaign, for instance, when I took over as leader of the National Party, I was up against another woman leader and the Prime Minister, leader of the Labour Party. And we had debates, public debates, which I think were almost always extremely civil. And yes, we would have arguments and we would point out the other one was wrong, and there were full debates, but I don't think anybody saw us being intentionally rude or abusive towards each other.

[MARGARET WILSON]: I was the first woman Speaker, and while I personally obviously couldn't know what that meant, others did comment on the fact it was the first woman Speaker. And I think we we all behave differently as Speakers as people, and also I think women do have a different perspective. I think there were three or four who found it more difficult. There was one in particular who whenever he addressed me - we decided the title would be Madam Speaker - he always emphasised the 'mad' in the Madam, just to make his point that obviously he didn't approve of me as Speaker. While I'd obviously as a member of Parliament observed the Speaker role and I had done what might be called due diligence as much as I could on it, nothing prepared you for the fact, I think, of first sitting in the chair, looking at the members and knowing you were the referee, and that from time to time - and probably quite frequently - the members wouldn't agree with the referee's rulings and therefore somehow you had to maintain a decorum and civility in what is a very difficult environment.

[PATSY REDDY]: As Governor-General I am effectively the head of state in New Zealand. We had Dame Cath as our first female Governor-General in 1990, and then Dame Silvia, our first High Court judge and our second female Governor-General. Those people really did open the doors, so I came through. I was in the private sector, so I went to law school, I studied law. I think there were only about five to ten percent of us [women] law students in the Seventies, learning how to talk with men, learning how to be regarded as an equal with men - which I needed to do in business and in law - without understanding that actually I wanted to be treated as a woman but on equal terms. As Governor-General I felt pretty secure and confident, I mean in my role as as a female Governor-General, because we'd had these amazing trailblazers of Silvia and Cath, both of whom I spoke to before I actually assumed the role. I can remember being told I'd probably make several speeches a week. I was horrified to think that I would have to speak in public so often. But like any job it's a matter of trial and error and being brave.

[NANAIA MAHUTA]: Well, there's a saying in Māoridom, 'Ka pai ā mua, ka pai ā muri', you know, the things happening on the front are only as good as the things in the back. Being the first Māori woman to represent the Māori Development portfolio and that space is really reflective of where Māori women are in terms of supporting development within our whānau, our family, on our marae definitely and within our tribe.

[MARAMA DAVIDSON]: As a minister I have got the ability to build a team around me of my choosing, and I have proactively being choosing a team of young and Māori and Pacific women to surround me, because that is the expertise that is needed in this work. People in positions of privilege like myself can make those proactive decisions to build the skills and the experience and those teams and that will actually help us do better work.

[SUE KEDGLEY]: The other thing that I've really enjoyed in more recent years is women MPs starting to work together. To a small degree it happened when I was there, but now we see these cross-party women working on critical issues like making it illegal for female genital mutilation.

[JO HAYES]: That is the first bill in the history of this Parliament that has four woman MP names on it. Never been done before.

[LOUISA WALL]: That has been an incredible privilege to engage with communities who are silenced most of the times, and we've had to actively go out and engage with them. So what we've tried to create is an environment where people can come to us with issues that they have and be as responsive as possible to meeting their needs.

[JAN LOGIE]: When I listen to my maiden speech it still feels like a real touchstone for me. It was about tackling gender-based violence, around the horrific levels of domestic and sexual violence that we have in this country, about actually recognising that we all rely on each other and we're stronger when we're all able to be strong, and that's around economic independence.

[JULIE ANNE GENTER]: The Green Party in Aotearoa New Zealand was hugely inspirational for me, especially Jeanette Fitzsimons, who was one of the founding co-leaders. It was the first time I really saw politicians speaking to my values and proposing really pragmatic solutions.

[BROOKE VAN VELDEN]: The ACT Party has been extremely supportive of having women in our ranks. I mean, only last year the board put forward a 27 year old woman, not only just a woman but a liberal woman, as the deputy leader of the party. And so I've always felt that support through the whole party network. But coming down to Parliament and having three other women in my caucus, I know that we're going to have that special bond, and we'll have each other's backs as well.

[KATHERINE RICH]: Parliament has changed. I think there is a lot more flexibility when it comes to parents wanting to take time off at the birth of their children, to be able to change their diaries to have a more balanced life.

[GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN]: In my first year in Parliament we had four new mums with newborn babies. We had the Minister for Women, the Prime Minister, and two first-time MPs.

[JULIE ANNE GENTER]: I felt that I was very well supported to have my child and be here and have a challenging role. The things I'm most proud of from my time as Minister for Women are the progress that we made in that term on closing the gender pay gap in the public service, but also really focusing in an intersectional way on the ethnic gender pay gap - so Māori and Pasifika women have to be the biggest priority.

[JAN TINETTI]: We're rolling out period products into all schools who opt in in New Zealand. So all girls who are at schools where they have opted into this announcement will be able to have free period products available to them. That's so exciting. I was at a school in Hamilton where we announced this rollout and just being able to have this free discussion with the young girls about periods was exceptional, something that I would never have thought that anyone would have had that discussion with me.

[WINNIE LABAN]: New Zealand is a wonderful exemplar of proving to the rest of the world that we can be inclusive of diversity, but more importantly of gender. And we've had women prime ministers, we've had women leaders of the Opposition.

[PATSY REDDY]: Sometimes I think it's hard not to be a little smug that here in New Zealand we've got not only a female head of state but a female Prime Minister, female Leader of the Opposition, female Chief Justice.

[MARYAN STREET]: We are now at the stage in 2021, in the wake of the 2020 election, able to say we have a parliament that looks more like Aotearoa New Zealand than it ever has, and I'm delighted by that.

[JACINDA ARDERN]: We're getting to some of the highest numbers of women we've had in this parliament, and we will hit 50%. But then the next message needs to be something else: you can not just be here but you can be here and you can be you.

[NANAIA MAHUTA]: I guess the things that hit home for me is I've got a young daughter, she's seven, and I want her to know alongside all her little girlfriends that anything's possible, that they just need to step forward and keep going and keep going. You know, there's that saying - i think there was a little video - 'run like a girl,' I'll say, 'yeah, run like a girl and make sure that you get to the right to the finish line, all the way, all the way.' And it's just that encouragement. And when young girls see other women reaching the top of their professional pathway, then it creates a bigger path for them to come through. And that's a legacy of leadership, you know - they're ordinary people doing extraordinary things, and their gender didn't stop them.