Women's Voting Right's

The first idea of women voting in Australia came in the 1850's after Great Britain granted a start to representative Government in the colonies. In the 1880's every colony had a suffrage society. These groups organised leaflets and newspapers, debates, rallies, letter writing campaigns and fundraisers while lobbying male parliamentarians to act on their behalf.

At this time, women were creating conflict as anti-suffragists, people who did not support female suffragists, tried to halt the success of the suffragists by writing letters to politicians and newspapers expressing their concern, mainly about the fact that women were not 'emotionally stable enough to vote' and that Women knew 'nothing' about commerce or industry. 

The Australian suffragists were different. Suffragettes from other countries employed dangerous and unwanted tactics to force governments, used vandalism, hunger strikes, even a bombing to get the message across that they wanted the same voting rights as men. However, Australian suffragists focused on peaceful protesting without disturbing major public events. They use tactics like petitions to challenge the various colonial governments, without harassing them or disturbing the general public, and compromising public safety in the process. 

The suffragists continuously fought for their right to vote by protesting while maintaining order and making sure not to disrupt any events. One of the most famous of these incidents was in September 1891 in Victoria, when a petition was sent with the support of the then Premier James Munro. It had around 30,000 signatures, was 260 meters long, and is estimated to have taken 3 people and three hours to unroll. It sought that 'Women should vote on equal terms with men'. Although this request was unsuccessful, it was still a major factor in pressuring the government to come to a conclusion and allow women voting rights.

He was not the only man however to advocate for women's voting rights: in 1897 Frederick Holder, who was the South Australian Premier, said 'I do not believe giving the vote to a woman makes her less of a woman...I hope this convention... will do itself the honour and do one half of the population of Australia justice, which I am asking.'

After years of successful pressure on all of the Colonial Governments in 1902, after federation, it was legislated that all women over the age of 21 were to be allowed to vote in Australian Elections. This ended the conflict as the Australian Government was forced to come to a resolution.

Even though Prime Minister Edmund Barton had signed a statement in 1897 in Adelaide suggesting that women's roles were in the home and not in politics, he still supported the legislation in 1902 that granted women the right to vote in federal elections, largely due to continued pressure from suffragist societies. 

It is important to note that this still did not allow First Nations' women to vote, as they were still subject to laws meaning that all Indigenous people, including women could not vote.