Category Archives: Politics

During the war as the deputy president of the Launceston Women’s Voluntary National Register, McIntyre was responsible for organising training schemes for women who wanted to be involved in the war effort. Her wartime experiences led her to argue for women to have ‘more say in the running of the country’.

From 1906 onwards Annie McVicar was actively engaged in social and educational work in Wellington. As an early member and vice president of the New Zealand Society for the Protection of Women and Children, she was involved in establishing the local branch of the Plunket Society in 1908. She was the first secretary of the branch in 1908–9 and served again in 1913, and was a vice president for a number of years in the 1920s and 1930s. When the first Plunket nurse, Joanna MacKinnon, promoted the society’s work in Wellington, Annie McVicar accompanied her on her visits to mothers; occasionally Annie carried out this work on her own. She served on the Worser Bay School committee, chaired the ladies’ advisory committee of the Technical College from 1923 to 1949, and was a parents’ representative on the college’s board of governors from 1927 to 1939.
Annie McVicar was also interested in politics. In 1913 she was a vice president of a local women’s branch of the New Zealand Political Reform League. She became a Miramar borough councillor in 1919 and in February 1921 was nominated to represent the borough on the Wellington City Council. In April that year, after Miramar had amalgamated with Wellington, she became the first woman to be elected to the Wellington City Council. An Evening Post editorial proclaimed that ‘Never before has Wellington had a lady City Councillor, and the innovation is full of promise.’ Annie McVicar held the seat in 1923 but was defeated in 1925. She was a member of the Wellington Hospital and Charitable Aid Board (later the Wellington Hospital Board) from 1915 until she retired in 1938. In local government, as in her other activities, McVicar was energetic and pragmatic: her particular interests were education and health, especially that of women and children.