Gaining the vote was a battle hard won for New Zealand women. Episode one of Beyond Kate visits the petition, hears about the woman whose name sits atop it & looks at the lives of rural women then and now.

It's a frosty, wintry Christchurch day when Peter Aitken and his wife Margaret take me on a drive to a cemetery in Yaldhurst where his great grandmother, Mary Jane Carpenter, and her husband, George Frederick Carpenter are buried.

While those names may not mean much to you, Mary Jane's should. She has a special place in the story of this nation and we're at the cemetery - where Peter used to have acorn battles as a child - to record part of this week's episode of RNZ's suffrage podcast, Beyond Kate.

The Kate in the title is of course, Kate Sheppard. But this series will look at the lives of other women back in the 1890s and the lives of women today to ask how far we have - and haven't - come in the 125 years since New Zealand became the first country where women were able to vote.

Mary Jane Carpenter is one of the more than 30,000 women who signed the 1893 petition that successfully went through parliament. That was a quarter of all adult Pākehā women in New Zealand at the time.

The petition comprises of around 500 sheets of paper that together measured 270m. They were glued together, rolled up on a segment of a broom handle and presented to parliament.

What makes Mary Jane's name special is that hers is the signature right at the top of page one. The very first.

Mary Jane lived first in Yaldhurst, and later Riccarton, where all the action was taking place around the petition.

Kate Sheppard led the campaign along with a group of women who were members of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. The sheets were mailed out around the country to other members of the WCTU who circulated them door-to-door to households across the country.

"Formidable, that's how I would describe ," says Aitken.

"To be proactive on women's rights or seeking women's vote...you had to have a fair bit of guts to stand up and propose those sorts of propositions".

Mary Jane arrived in New Zealand in 1870, with her parents and two siblings. She was in her early twenties and a domestic servant. But before long she married George, having seven children and helping run their 260 acre farm.

As well as climbing the class ladder, Mary Jane was a staunch Methodist. And for many women who supported suffrage, religion and temperance were the driving force behind the movement…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details