Kim Knight: The hilarity and horror of the struggle

Women took on the patriarchy to win the vote, and had their chess skills called into question for their troubles. Photo / Getty Images

It was August 1892 and Dr Bakewell was done.

"If New Zealand adopts this measure she will make herself the laughing stock of the world!"

The Herald published his letter. Women did get the vote. The world did not get the giggles. But search the phrase "women will never" in the National Library's historic newspaper archive PapersPast, and appreciate the full hilarity and horror of the female fight to be taken seriously ...

"Working women will never compete on anything like equal terms with men until they eat more." — Unattributed, Oamaru Mail, March 19, 1902.

"It is very certain that women will never increase their influence for good if they follow the example of that miserable minority among their sex who clamour for what they are pleased to term 'woman's rights'." — Aime Martin, Lake Country Press, April 7, 1881.

"Women will never be able to compete on equal terms with men in cricket, because they cannot pull their arm back to throw like a man." — Jack Hobbs, New Zealand Herald, August 19, 1931.

"There are hundreds of employments for which women will never be fitted by any amount of higher education, and where men will have the field all to themselves." — Unattributed, Wanganui Herald, February 9, 1888.

"Women will never be able to go to Parliament because they want to go there. They will only be able to go through the same doors as men. They will have to persuade some constituency to elect them. They will have to submit to tests far more severe than any man would have to face ..." — Ethel Snowden, New Zealand Herald, September 16, 1933.

"Women will never succeed in entirely eliminating the sentimental strain from their mental equipment. A certain amount of sentimentality is part and parcel of the feminine outfit." — Unattributed, New Zealand Herald, September 12, 1923.

"I impeach that most degrading word 'obey' and charge it with being the cause of a large amount of brutal wife-beating ... We women will never rest till we clear ourselves from this foul stain of being bound by law to obey another." — M. A. Clark, letter to the editor, Lyttelton Times, February 20, 1892.

"According to Rubinstein, women will never make good composers ... women lack absorption, concentration, power of thought, largeness of emotional horizon, freedom in outlining and so on." — Special report, Daily Telegraph, May 28, 1892.

"I do not know how far this class of woman-workers are supposed to go. They may even be sent on to the board as shearers. I sincerely hope women will never descend so low in the field of labour as to do those things." — A. A. M. Garmson, letter to the editor, Lyttelton Times, June 30, 1894.

"Women will never dominate the world. If that ever happened, then civilisation must indeed perish." — G. K Chesterton, Stratford Evening Post, May 16, 1931.

"This progress in the evolution of women will never destroy woman's domestic tendencies. Woman's primary instinct will always be that of the home-maker." — Countess Margit Bethlen, New Zealand Herald, February 28, 1931.

"The game exercises the body, trains the eyes and teaches concentration and self-control. The nerve strain in match play is so great that women will never be able to defeat men at the game; if they do they will be super-women." — Walter Lindrum, world champion billiard player, Auckland Star, February 6, 1934.

"Women will never be healthy, will never be free, will never being able to shake off their present physical inferiority, which is the product of their costume, until they dress themselves sensibly." — Mrs Dietrick, letter to the editor, Evening Star, March 2, 1895.

"The best women will never wade in through the muck of a general election. We have special race representation now, we may have special sex representation by-and-by." — A Woman, letter to the editor, New Zealand Times, July 6, 1896

"The true independence of women will never be achieved until divorce is made more easy. When a woman is free to dissolve the marriage tie on reasonable grounds, then will cruelty to wives cease." — Unattributed, Observer, September 25, 1897.

"Women will never do without velveteen!" — Morey and Son tailors, Taranaki Herald, April 8, 1915.

"Women will never go back to long hair ... women have discovered that, although short hair only became fashionable in 1923, their hair is growing naturally wavy. That is because there is less weight to drag the hair down and make it straight." — M. Emile, London hairdresser, New Zealand Herald, June 22, 1940.

"Whatever individuals may think, the mass of women will never rise superior to the mass of men." — Melbourne Punch, New Zealand Mail, October 20, 1898.

"We have not been tried by our peers, and women will never get justice until there are women juries." — Clara Giveen, English suffragette accused of arson, New Zealand Herald, July 14, 1913.

"Women will never be men's equal at chess ... generally, women are less able than men to get a grasp of the game on its most scientific side." — Vera Stevenson, world's women's champion, Evening Star, October 29, 1938.

"I, for one, hope that women will never be called upon to face the rigours of the front line. Indeed, I consider it an impossibility. A woman's place always has been and always will be in the home. Granted, they are doing invaluable war work in hospitals, Red Cross organisations — even factories ..." — Manpower, letter to the editor, Auckland Star, September 30, 1942.

"Women will never be content to go back to anything like their pre-war status, of course, and there being far too many of us in this already overcrowded little island, the great solution seems to be emigration, as soon as ships can be found to distribute us more evenly over the face of the globe." — News and Notes, Southern Cross, May 1, 1920.

"There are at least 200 women in charge of country offices, with residential quarters attached, which married men with families should be occupying ... these women will never marry while in receipt of such large salaries." — Non-Libet, letter to the editor, Auckland Star, November 14, 1921.

"Women will never lose their femininity. Even those I have seen wearing overalls and doing hard manual work still like a feminine touch of lipstick." — Mrs Peter Fraser, wife of the Prime Minister. Evening Post, August 12, 1944.

"One thing is sure — that women will have a much better time in the future than they have had in the past. I do not necessarily mean they will be happier ... Fulfil themselves as much as they may, women will never get beyond the function of being the complement of men. And lest I may be misunderstood, let me add that men will never get beyond the function of being the complement of women." — Arnold Bennett, Manawatu Times, October 16, 1922.

"Women have reached the limit in the shortness of their skirts. They cannot decently show any more leg, therefore it seems as if their only alternative is to wear trousers. One thing is certain, that women will never return to long skirts." — Baroness De Stoeckl, New Zealand Herald, January 19, 1927.

"Women will never be a success in public life, because those who are the most likely to succeed in anything avoid it. The women who have got things done in this world have always worked alone. Perhaps a certain loneliness is always the personality of the great; with women, complete isolation is the very essence of their greatness." — Woman Organiser, Dunstan Times, August 4, 1930.

"Does emancipation lessen the agony of child-bearing, does it enlighten the heavy shackles of our sex, even though we fly from one continent to another, hunt big game, or beat man in every sport that ever was invented? There is just one game which women will never be able to win, the great game of Life itself. The odds are too heavily stacked against her." — Jennie Wain, New Zealand Herald, April 8, 1933.

"Women will never 'find themselves' until they realise that they have a natural right to a free economic status and that this natural right is unaffected by marriage or the bearing of children." — Margarete Bonnevie, chairman Norwegian Women's Rights Association. New Zealand Herald, September 19, 1936.

"To oust women from what are called 'men's jobs' would be against progress and against what the public wants. Women will never let men put the clock back in that way!" — Sylvia Pankhurst, suffragette, New Zealand Herald, May 13, 1938.