The National Council of Women of New Zealand was established in 1896, three years after women in New Zealand won the right to the vote, as an umbrella organisation uniting a number of different women's societies that existed in New Zealand at that time. Its founding president was Kate Sheppard, who had led the campaign for women's suffrage. The NCWNZ went into recess in 1906 but was reformed in 1919. As of 2021, the NCWNZ remains a leading and influential organisation that works to achieve gender equality in New Zealand. Since 1896, members have agreed resolutions by majority vote at national conferences, which form policies for the NCWNZ's work. These resolutions inform submissions made by the NCWNZ to Parliament, government departments and other organisations.

Women's suffrage was an important political issue in the late-nineteenth-century New Zealand. In early colonial New Zealand, as in European societies, women were excluded from any involvement in politics. Public opinion began to change in the latter half of the nineteenth century and after years of effort by women's suffrage campaigners, led by Kate Sheppard, New Zealand became the first nation in the world in which all women had the right to vote in parliamentary elections.