Margaret Anne Wilson DCNZM (born 20 May 1947) is a New Zealand lawyer, academic and former Labour Party politician.

Born in Gisborne, Wilson was raised in Morrinsville where her parents Bill and Patricia (Paddy) ran a small store.

Wilson's family were Catholic and Labour-voting; Bill's father's cousin was the Labor Party Premier of New South Wales, Bob Heffron.

Briefly, she worked as a law clerk and solicitor in Auckland from 1970 to 1972 (in 1971 she was secretary of the legal employees' union), before a master's in jurisprudence on workers' participation in management in New Zealand was completed in 1974.

[1] In 1975, she spent a year studying for a doctorate at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto, Ontario, which she did not complete.

Before her overseas studies, Wilson had begun to campaign for women's rights; she returned to these aims in 1976 and joined the Labour Party as a means to those ends.

[3][4] In her memoir, Wilson reflected that future Prime Minister and her then-University of Auckland colleague Helen Clark encouraged her candidacy.

Wilson sought a judicial recount as since New Zealand First won less than five percent of the party vote they would have no seats in parliament in at all if Peters lost the electorate (allowing Labour to govern solely with the Alliance and not needing the Greens).

She established the position of Equal Employment Opportunities commissioner at the Human Rights Commission and progressed reform to matrimonial property law.

[10] In December 2004, the Government announced that it would nominate Wilson for the post of Speaker of the House of Representatives, a position which would become vacant with the pending retirement of Jonathan Hunt.

[11] On 21 June 2005, Wilson ejected the Prime Minister Helen Clark from Parliament's Chamber for interjecting while National's Nick Smith was speaking.

[17] In the 2009 New Year Honours, Wilson was appointed a Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, in recognition of her services as a Member of Parliament and as Speaker.

[19] Wilson strongly promotes various social causes such as feminism and multiculturalism, and opponents often painted her as Labour's most "politically correct" minister.

Wilson, alongside Helen Kelly, were noted opponents of neoliberalism and tried to support the union movement whilst in Government.