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A large group photograph showing members of a branch of the Women's Institute. All of the ladies in the photograph are unidentified. Originating in Canada in 1897, the The Dominion Federation of Women's Institutes, as it was known at the time, was set up to enable women to take an effective part in community life and its development. The idea of Women’s Institutes was first introduced to New Zealand by Miss Ann Elizabeth Jerome Spencer on her return from war work in England, where she had seen the work of the organisation and the first branch was founded in the Hawkes Bay in 1921. In 2014, there were 13 individual branches in the Manawatu Federation.