The Women's Suffrage League, founded in 1888, spearheaded the campaign for women's right to vote in South Australia. [1] In 1894 South Australia became the first Australian colony and the fourth place in the world to grant women's suffrage. At the same time women were granted the right to stand for election to Parliament, the first place in the world.
The Women's Suffrage League evolved from the Social Purity Society, an organisation that was concerned about the social and economic difficulties many women faced. The Society campaigned for fairer treatment of women by the law, and greater legal protection for young women. Thanks to the Society the age of consent for girls was raised to 16 and the age of young people in brothels was regulated. [1]
Members of the Society and similar movements of the period, notably temperance advocates including the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, [2] realised that the key to affecting social change was parliamentary representation. This led the establishment of the Women's Suffrage League of South Australia with the view of initiating a movement for the enfranchisement of women. [3] Their first meeting was held on 20 July 1888 at the Adelaide YMCA rooms, with about 80 women in attendance along with members of parliament, religious leaders and others. [4] Edward Charles Stirling was appointed as the first chairman of the League, with Mary Lee and Hector McLennan co-secretaries and Rose Birks treasurer. [4] The first female president was Mary Colton, appointed in 1891. [4]
Members of the League were instrumental in collecting signatures from across the colony, resulting in the largest petition ever presented to the Parliament of South Australia, 400 feet (120 m) long with over 11,600 signatures, [5] which was presented to the parliament by George Stanley Hawker in August 1894. [6] In December, the Constitutional Amendment (Adult Suffrage) Act 1894 was passed, which gave women not only the right to vote but the right to stand for parliament. [7]
Those key to the suffrage movement in South Australia included:
The nature of society at the time meant that the role of men was vital for the success of the campaign for women's suffrage. Key men included:
Women's suffrage is the right of women to vote in elections. At the beginning of the 18th century, some people sought to change voting laws to allow women to vote. Liberal political parties would go on to grant women the right to vote, increasing the number of those parties' potential constituencies. National and international organizations formed to coordinate efforts towards women voting, especially the International Woman Suffrage Alliance.
Mary Lee was an Irish-Australian suffragist and social reformer in South Australia.
Sir John Blackler Colton, was an Australian politician, Premier of South Australia and philanthropist. His middle name, Blackler, was used only rarely, as on the birth certificate of his first son.
Women's suffrage was an important political issue in the late-nineteenth-century New Zealand. In early colonial New Zealand, as in European societies, women were excluded from any involvement in politics. Public opinion began to change in the latter half of the nineteenth century and after years of effort by women's suffrage campaigners, led by Kate Sheppard, New Zealand became the first nation in the world in which all women had the right to vote in parliamentary elections.
A movement to fight for women's right to vote in the United Kingdom finally succeeded through acts of Parliament in 1918 and 1928. It became a national movement in the Victorian era. Women were not explicitly banned from voting in Great Britain until the Reform Act 1832 and the Municipal Corporations Act 1835. In 1872 the fight for women's suffrage became a national movement with the formation of the National Society for Women's Suffrage and later the more influential National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). As well as in England, women's suffrage movements in Wales, Scotland and other parts of the United Kingdom gained momentum. The movements shifted sentiments in favour of woman suffrage by 1906. It was at this point that the militant campaign began with the formation of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU).
Kentucky Equal Rights Association (KERA) was the first permanent statewide women's rights organization in Kentucky. Founded in November 1888, the KERA voted in 1920 to transmute itself into the Kentucky League of Women Voters to continue its many and diverse progressive efforts on behalf of women's rights.
Women's suffrage in Australia was one of the early achievements of Australian democracy. Following the progressive establishment of male suffrage in the Australian colonies from the 1840s to the 1890s, an organised push for women's enfranchisement gathered momentum from the 1880s, and began to be legislated from the 1890s, decades in advance of Europe and North America. South Australian women achieved the right to vote in 1894, and to stand for office in 1895 following the world first Constitutional Amendment Act 1894. This preceded even male suffrage in Tasmania. Western Australia granted women the right to vote from 1899, although with some racial restrictions. In 1902, the newly established Australian Parliament passed the Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902, which set a uniform law enabling women to vote at federal elections and to stand for the federal parliament. By 1908, the remaining Australian states had legislated for women's suffrage for state elections. Grace Benny was elected as the first councillor in 1919, Edith Cowan the first state Parliamentarian in 1921, Dorothy Tangney the first Senator and Enid Lyons the first Member of the House of Representatives in 1943.
Robert Caldwell, occasionally referred to as "poet Caldwell", was a South Australian politician. He was a member of the South Australian House of Assembly from 1884 to 1902, representing the electorates of Yorke Peninsula (1884-1890) and Onkaparinga (1890-1902).
Sylvanus James Magarey was a surgeon and politician in the Colony of South Australia, described as "an exemplary citizen, social reformer and legislator". He was a foundation Councillor of the Women's Suffrage League.
Rosetta Jane "Rose" Birks (1856–1911) was a social reformer and philanthropist who played a key role in South Australian women's suffrage.
Elizabeth Webb Nicholls was a key suffragist in the campaign for votes for women in South Australia during the 1890s. She took on several high-profile roles in the capital of South Australia, Adelaide and was President of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) of South Australia, one of the most prominent organisations in the successful campaigns which made South Australia the first of the Australian colonies to grant women the right to vote in 1894.
Mary Colton, was an Australian philanthropist and suffragist.
The Edinburgh National Society for Women's Suffrage was a leading group for women's rights in Scotland. It was one of the first three suffrage societies to be formed in Britain.
Daisy Dorothea Solomon (1882–1978) was posted as a human letter in the British suffragette campaign using a quirk in the postal system to approach the Prime Minister who would not receive a delegation of women demanding the right to vote. Solomon was secretary to suffragette groups and imprisoned for protest, and went on hunger strike.
The Glasgow and West of Scotland Association for Women’s Suffrage was an organisation involved in campaigning for women’s suffrage, based in Glasgow, with members from all over the west of Scotland.
Women's Christian Temperance Union of New Zealand is a non-partisan, non-denominational, and non-profit organisation that is the oldest continuously active national organisation of women in New Zealand. The national organisation began in 1885 during the visit to New Zealand by Mary Clement Leavitt, the first world missionary for the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. The WCTU NZ was an early branch of the World Woman's Christian Temperance Union and a founding affiliate of the National Council of Women of New Zealand. Men may join the WCTU NZ as honorary members.
The Constitutional Amendment Act 1894 was an Act of the Parliament of South Australia to amend the South Australian Constitution Act 1856 to include women's suffrage. It was the seventh attempt to introduce voting rights for women and received widespread public support including the largest petition ever presented to the South Australian parliament. The proposed legislation was amended during debate to include the right of women to stand for parliament after an opponent miscalculated that such a provision would cause the bill to be defeated. Once passed, South Australia become the fourth state in the world to give women the vote and the first to give women the right to be elected to parliament.
Maria (Marie) Elizabeth Kirk born Maria Elizabeth Sutton was a British-born Australian temperance advocate and social reformer. She was involved in women's rights including organising a "monster" petition for women's suffrage in 1891.