Olivia Coustance -
Her picture, posted on the 10 NZD banknote, acts as a testimony to her heritage. Kate Sheppard was raised in the UK and moved to New Zealand as a young adult, where she founded the local branch of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. As part of her career, she was a columnist in the feminist rubric of the Prohibitionist, a pro-temperance paper.
She created the Union in the late 1880s, not long before the Beehive (NZ’s Parliament's nickname) voted for women’s the right to vote in 1893 (1919: women became eligible).
Playing off her influence in her column on the Prohibitionist, she galvanised public support for the feminist cause in New Zealand; definitely a pioneer!
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