About Our Wāhine
Our Wāhine is an illustrated history of New Zealand’s extraordinary women created by New Zealand artist Kate Hursthouse
To celebrate the 125th anniversary of women’s suffrage in New Zealand, Kate illustrated extraordinary women from New Zealand’s history. The text was researched and written by Kate’s mother Karen Brook. This passion project was done after hours with no funding and aims to create a visually exciting and accessible overview of the role of New Zealand women throughout history.
The project wrapped up in 2018 but still lives on via this website and the resources we have available here.
For more information on Suffrage 125 please visit their website and Facebook page.
You can watch a news video about this project by NEWSHUB here
This project has shown us there are so many New Zealand women role models but their stories have often been hidden in the history books or, at times, forgotten. Selecting a few women from a list of from hundreds of inspiring women in New Zealand's history has been a hard task. We have endeavoured to represent and tell these women's stories to the best of our ability. We have a huge amount of respect for every woman we depict in this project.
If you have any recommendations, suggestions or issues please do get in touch as we would love to hear from you - hello@ourwahine.nz
Kate HURSTHOUSE
Kate Hursthouse is a New Zealand artist specialising in illustration, calligraphy and lettering.
When she is not busy creating things, she can be found drinking tea and playing the guitar. Her first children's book is being released in April 2018.
You can find out more about her and her art at www.katehursthouse.com
KAREN BROOK
Karen Brook trained as a dentist and then as an orthodontist in the 1970's. At that time there were very few women working in these fields and often she felt the lack of women role models.
Her interest in both history and writing has developed alongside her day job. She has taken time out from researching her uncle's POW experience, to focus on the stories of these 125 inspirational New Zealand women.