Ellen Ballance

Ellen Ballance (; 1846 – 14 June 1935) was a New Zealand suffragist and community leader. She was a vice-president of the Women's Progressive Society, an international suffrage organisation based in London, and the inaugural president of the Wanganui Women's Franchise League in 1893.

Early life and family Ballance was born in Wellington and was the daughter of merchant David Anderson and his wife Ann Thompson. She had five brothers and three sisters.

On 19 May 1870, she married John Ballance, then a newspaper editor. She was his second wife. In 1886 they adopted her four-year-old niece, Florence, and re-christened her Kathleen.

Political involvement and activism Ballance was a prominent figure in the suffrage movement in New Zealand, and a vice-president of the Women's Progressive Society, an international suffrage organisation based in London. She shared her husband's political interests and became highly regarded in political circles in Wellington. In 1891, Ballance wrote to Sheppard to say that she would do everything in her power to "further the cause".

Ballance regularly attended Parliament to listen to debates. On one occasion in 1891 she caused a stir in the House when, after an anti-suffrage MP declared that women did not want the vote, she handed around a petition in the Ladies' Gallery. 68 women signed the petition to assure the House that they did in fact want the vote. She also collected signatures for the 1891 women's suffrage petition.

Ballance lived in Wanganui for the rest of her life, and remained active in community organisations, including the Anglican church, the Wanganui Orphanage and the Plunket Society.