[2] Her mother Sarah Jane Kirk was a leader in the Wellington Christian Ladies' Association and the Wellington chapter of the Women's Christian Temperance Union New Zealand; and she encouraged her three daughters to participate in these organizations as they worked to support impoverished families and victims of domestic violence.

Her sister, Lily, died that year, and Kirk went on to be the secretary of the New Zealand Society for the Protection of Women and Children[5] in 1924.

As reported in The White Ribbon: "When she takes her holiday, the members of Committee, who attend to the office and visiting are constantly met with this plaint: 'Isn't Miss Kirk here?'

[8] By 1903 Kirk was the national superintendent of the Narcotics department of the Women's Christian Temperance Union of New Zealand (WCTU NZ), emphasizing the need for additional literature about the debiliatory effects of tobacco.

In giving her report at the national convention that year she "demonstrated her own methods of procedure when winning small boys from the use of the forbidden cigarette.

Coates to provide government-funded employment, stating that she "knew personally of many mothers, with their children, who were stinted in food and short of necessaries of life.

"[11] She also worked on behalf of the Wellington WCTU, together with Nellie Jane Peryman to petition the Minister of Justice to close the Courts to the public when cases of maintenance, separation and affiliation were being heard.

Kirk explained: "Young women are forced to tell intimate details before a crowd of idle, curious men, then the girl is a marked character, and often is followed from the Court by one of the idlers, and her position becomes worse than ever.

"[12] Kirk served as the superintendent of the WCTU NZ Social and Moral Hygiene Department and connected temperance with the dangers of unprotected sex.

She pushed for women's rights even in the face of popular fears of returning soldiers bringing venereal diseases back home to their wives.

[15] Cybile Kirk served as president of the National Council of Women of New Zealand (NCWNZ) from 1934 to 1937, one three-year term.