Women voting in a general election

On this day in 1893, adult women voted in a national general election in New Zealand. This is rightly celebrated as the first such total suffrage in world history. However, it was not the first occasion on which women were able to vote on the same basis as men. As historian David Olusoga explained in his BBC2 series, in the 1792 elections in Sierra Leone, then a new British colony, all heads of household could vote and one-third were ethnic African women.