Women and Government in Australia - Women's Suffrage

Women's Suffrage

Women's suffrage groups began to appear in the Australian political landscape in the 1880s. The first, the Victorian Women's Suffrage Society, was formed by Henrietta Dugdale in Victoria in 1884. The organisations involved in the suffrage movement varied across the colonies. A unified body, the Australian Women's Suffrage Society was formed in 1889, the society's aims were to educate women and men about a woman's right to vote and stand for parliament. Key figures in the Australian suffrage movement included, from South Australia Mary Lee and Catherine Helen Spence, in Western Australia Edith Cowan, from New South Wales Maybanke Anderson, Louisa Lawson, Dora Montefiore and Rose Scott, Tasmanians Alicia O'Shea Petersen and Jessie Rooke, Queenslander Emma Miller, and Victorians Annette Bear-Crawford, Henrietta Dugdale, Vida Goldstein, Alice Henry and Annie Lowe.

In 1861 land-owning South Australian women were able to vote in local elections. In 1894, South Australia followed New Zealand in extending the franchise to women voters - but went further than New Zealand and offered women also the right to stand for the colonial Parliament. South Australian women voted for the first time in the 1896 SA House of Assembly election. In 1897 Catherine Helen Spence became the first woman political candidate when she ran for election to the National Australasian Convention as one of ten delegates, but came 22nd out of 33 candidates. In 1899 Western Australian women achieved voting rights for colonial elections but not the right to stand for the colonial Parliament. In 1901 women from both South Australia and Western Australia voted in the 1901 federal election.

On 12 June 1902 the Commonwealth Franchise Act came into effect, granting most Australian women the right to vote and stand in Commonwealth elections. Franchise of Indigenous Australians at the federal level was not universal until 1962, and voting by Indigenous Australians was not compulsory until 1984. The first election at which women used both the right to vote and stand for election was the 1903 election, held on 16 December 1903. Four women stood for election: Selina Anderson stood for election to the House of Representatives for the Division of Dalley; and Vida Goldstein, Nellie Martel and Mary Moore-Bentley ran for Senate positions; none were successful.

Following the inclusion of women in the 1903 election, many Australian women and the Australian government, led by Prime Minister Alfred Deakin, used their experience to promote women's suffrage in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. 'Trust the Women Mother, As I Have Done', banner painted by Dora Meeson was carried at the head of the Australian and New Zealand Women Voters' Committee contingent in the Women's Suffrage Coronation March in London on 17 June 1911.

New South Wales, Tasmania, Queensland and Victoria followed the lead of the other states in allowing women to vote, and later to stand for election. Victoria, the last state to grant women's suffrage, had briefly allowed women to vote when the Electoral Act 1863 enfranchised all ratepayers listed on local municipal rolls. Women in Victoria voted in the 1864 general election. The legislative mistake was quickly repaired in 1865, and it took 19 private members' bills from 1889 until Victorian women gained the vote in 1908, and were able to exercise the vote in 1911. Women in the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory were, as federal subjects, eligible to vote at the federal level from their establishment. By the time the territories achieved self-government in 1978 and 1989 respectively, they did not need to enact specific legislation to enable the women's vote.

The right to vote in local government elections was granted later in most jurisdictions than it was at the state and federal levels. The right to vote in local elections was also not automatic, as property ownership qualifications limited the eligibility to vote and stand for local elections.

Significantly in 2010-2011 (till the March 2011 state election) the city of Sydney was operating totally under female governance: from Lord Mayor (also State Member of Parliament for Sydney) Clover Moore, State Premier Kristina Keneally, State Governor Marie Bashir, Sydney Federal Member of Parliament Tanya Plibersek, Prime Minister of Australia Julia Gillard and Governor-General of Australia Quentin Bryce.