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Women Suffrage in Australia

1902

Australia is a relatively young country, at least a century younger than the United States. Indeed, only in 1850 when Victoria became a colony did any Australian body have the power to confer votes on either men or women.

Like the American west, for most of the 19th century, Australia was thinly populated. Throughout the century, as the various regions of Australia were populated, new colonies with their own constitutions, political systems, laws, and voting qualifications were formed. Most newly-formed colonies had high property qualifications for the suffrage, and sometimes plural voting rights, to restrict the franchise and political power to the wealthiest citizens.

Not surprising since Australian states were British colonies, their political systems and political theory derived from British law. As under British law, property, not people, were represented in Parliament since the legal theory at the time was that only those who had a significant stake in the community and social system could be expected to vote wisely. That stake in the community was represented by a person's property. In some areas, plural voting was allowed, voting in which a person could vote in more than one electoral district as long as the individual held property in each of the districts he voted in. Most Australian state Parliaments were bicameral, with the upper chamber having high property qualifications but with the lower chamber having a gradually diminishing property qualification.

More clearly than in any of the other countries discussed in this series except possibly Finland, in Australia the issues of suffrage and class became intertwined. If women were enfranchised provided they met the same qualifications as men, the women who would be enfranchised would be the wives and daughters of the rich and powerful, solidifying the power of the upper- and middle- class. Working – class men sought the vote for themselves as a way to protect themselves from the rich and powerful; they viewed an expansion of the franchise to women under those conditions as a threat to themselves and their families. Most working-class women sided with their husbands in desiring "the family vote." This antagonism between suffrage for women and universal male suffrage is an under-current throughout the entire Australian woman suffrage campaign. This same antagonism was present in suffrage movements in many other countries as well, especially those countries that were industrially advanced, that had a well-entrenched elite, and that had a significant number of disfranchised males. It was for this reason that at times conservatives voted for woman suffrage while at the same time vociferously denouncing it.

Universal manhood suffrage for its Assembly was written into South Australia's Constitution and achieved by 1860 in New South Wales, Victoria, and Queensland and not until 1900 in Tasmania. Two years after its founding, Western Australia granted manhood suffrage in 1893. Plural voting, however, offset the gradual extension of the franchise and elimination of the plural vote was the primary political reform endorsed by Liberals. Only after the plural vote was eliminated did labor support woman suffrage, and often grudgingly since many workers believed that women competed with them for jobs and thus lowered their salaries.

As was the case in other countries, social activism for one cause or another catalyzed women to work for their own emancipations and enfranchisement. In Australia, two social reform movements play this galvanizing role: temperance and "moral purity." The temperance movement was part of the 19th century women against violence against women movement: drunken men who squandered the family's income on alcohol were blamed for the high level of wife-battering and family poverty. The temperance movement sought to eliminate the problem of wife abuse and poverty by removing liquor for men's lives.

The moral purity movement supported a variety of related changes all revolving around sex and the sexual double standard. The moral purity movement sought to eliminate the sexual double standard by raising the sexual standard of men to the same level as for women. In places social purity reformers sought to raise the age of consent to sixteen or eighteen, often from age 8 or 10. Other reformers sought to outlaw prostitution, either to punish both the prostitute and her clients or to rescue prostitutes and set them on a "correct moral course", often by giving them job training, a job that paid a living wage, and food, medical care, clothing, and shelter until they "got on their feet."

As in Britain and continental Europe, various Australia states had Contagious Disease Acts, ostensibly to protect military personnel from the ravages of then-dreaded and almost incurable sexually-transmitted diseases. The Act allowed suspected prostitutes to be arrested and forcibly examined for venereal disease. Any woman could be accused at any time by any person – a neighbor with a grudge, a spurned would-be boyfriend, a jealous family member, a former lover -- of being a prostitute. Without a trial, the woman was required to undergo a physical examination. If her hymen was intact, it was usually broken (ie, if she was a virgin, the evidence to that effect was destroyed) and she was issued a medical certificate enabling her to be a prostitute, destroying her reputation. If she wasn't a virgin, but was healthy, she was issued a medical certificate, enabling her to be a prostitute, even if she had never received money for sex. If she was diseased, she was denied a medical certificate and her reputation was destroyed. An accused woman could not win, she could not confront her accuser, she would not even know who her accuser was, she had no trial, no due process, no nothing to counter any accusation made against her for any reason. Josephine Butler as the World Superintendent of the Moral Purity department of the WCTU, led the campaign against the British measure which, she said, served to 'deprive women of their natural and civil rights, drive them outside the law, and make a slave class of them that men may sin more comfortably'.

So in this young land where women were often vastly outnumbered by men, women sought to create communities in a variety of ways: by building churches and schools, by engaging in civic reform movements, and finally, out of frustration, to empowering themselves so that those changes would be made.

Space does not permit detailing the leaders of the woman suffrage movement in each state, but Oldfield discusses the fight for woman suffrage in each state in some detail. As in the US, one state, South Australia led the nation by granting suffrage to its women in 1894, fully six years before the Australian federal constitution was drawn up. South Australian women demanded that South Australia not enter the Australian commonwealth unless South Australian women were guaranteed federal suffrage. This demand would be crucial in granting federal suffrage to Australian women in 1902. Most states did not grant woman state suffrage at that time and women were gradually enfranchised at the state and local levels. The table to the right gives the year in which each state granted women state suffrage.

This discussion would be incomplete without a brief mention of many of the men and women who worked for suffrage in Australia.

Mary Leavitt, traveling representative of the American Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), began temperance societies in several Australian states on her visit in 1886.

Ebenezer Ward, a staunch opponent of woman suffrage, is credited with giving South Australian the right to stand for Parliament in 1894 when they were enfranchised. In an attempt to add a "poison pill" to the woman suffrage bill, Ward added an amendment that also granted women the right to stand for election. The amendment was accepted and the bill passed. Many thanks to Ward for his help.

Elizabeth Nicholls and Serena Lake: leaders of the WCTU branch of the South Australian woman suffrage movement. After winning suffrage for South Australian women, Nicholls became active in a number of other state's suffrage movements.

Mary Lee: trade unionist and secretary of South Australia's Women's Suffrage League

James Stirling and Dr. Maragary: led pro-suffrage faction in South Australia's Parliament

Jessie Ackerman, another visitor from the American WCTU, reinvigorated suffrage movements around Australia during her 1889 visit and established the WTCU in Western Australia.

Walter James: leader of pro-suffrage faction in Western Australian Parliament

Edith Cowan: recording secretary of Karrakatta Club, formed as a place where women could discuss political issues; first woman elected to state Parliament (1920)

Charles Kingston and Frederick Holder: sponsors of the woman suffrage amendment to the federal constitution

Dora Montefiore: called first meeting to discuss woman suffrage in New South Wales

Rose Scott: leader of the New South Wales woman's suffrage movement from start to finish

Louisa Lawson: editor of The Dawn, a woman's rights and woman's suffrage journal in New South Wales

William McWilliams: women's chief spokesman in Tasmania's Parliament

Jessie Rooke: founded Tasmanian Women's Suffrage Association (also member of WCTU)

Henrietta Dugsdale: leader of the Victorian woman suffrage movement

Annie Lowe: co-founder with Henrietta Dugsdale in 1884 of the Victorian Woman's Suffrage Society

Annette Bear-Crawford: united various Victorian woman suffrage societies under one banner

Today's primary source is very sort: the text of a woman's suffrage poster.

SIXTEEN REASONS FOR SUPPORTING
WOMAN'S SUFFRAGE

1. Because it is the foundation of all political liberty that those who obey the law, should be able to have a voice in choosing those who make the law.

2. Because Parliament should be a reflection of the wishes of the people.

3. Because Parliament cannot fully reflect the wishes of the people, when the wishes of women are without any direct representation.

4. Because a Government of the people, by the people, and for the people, should mean all the people and not one half.

5. Because most laws affect women as much as men.

6. Because laws which affect women especially are now passed without consulting those persons whom they are intended to benefit.

7. Because some of these laws press grievously on women as mothers, as for instance those relating to the guardianship of children.

8. Because some set up a different standard of morality for men and women.

9. Because such laws are thereby rendered insufficient for protecting women from wrong.

10. Because the enfranchisement of women is a question of public well being, and not a help to any political party or sect.

11. Because the votes of women would add power and weight to the more settled communities.

12. Because the possession of votes would increase the sense of responsibility amongst women towards questions of public importance.

13. Because public spirited mothers make public spirited sons.

14. Because large numbers of intelligent, thoughtful, hard working women desire the Franchise.

15. Because the objections raised against their having the franchise are based on sentiment, not on reason.

16. Because, to sum up all reasons in one – it is just.

Originally published by the WCTU National Franchise Department,
New Zealand
Reprinted for WCTU of South Australia

References:

Audrey Oldfield, Woman Suffrage in Australia: A Gift or a Struggle? [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992]

On Line Resources:

Letters from Zenobia, South Australia, 1888-1891

Return to Women's History Month 2003 Table of Contents

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last updated February 2003