Without Compromise : A Brief History of the New Zealand Women's Christian Temperance Union

The Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was by 1993 the oldest surviving national organisation of women in New Zealand. From the time it was founded in 1885, it worked to promote temperance, Christian values, and social reform, and to abolish the trade in alcohol and drugs. The membership of the WCTU peaked in the late 1920s at around 7700. In 1993 it had about 600 members.

New Zealand women were no strangers to temperance when they were first introduced to the WCTU. Signing the pledge was a commitment undertaken by numbers of settler women in the mid-nineteenth century, and temperance meetings were regular events. Women joined the Order of Good Templars from its inception in New Zealand in 1872, and a women's temperance group was formed in Invercargill in August 1884. This is an updated history of the Union