After years of work and striving toward female suffrage in Australia, Australian suffragettes in 1894 found allies among the Labour Party.
Conservative meanwhile said they thought most women did not want the vote.
Suffragettes collected 30,000 signature and presented them in the shape of a massive stage prop.
Here's how one history tells what they did:
The Victorian Women’s Suffrage Petition of 1891 contains almost 30,000 signatures and addresses collected by members of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, the Victorian Temperance Alliance and other women’s suffrage groups, demanding the right for women to vote in the colony of Victoria. Presented in 1891 with the support of Premier James Munro, whose wife was one of the signatories, it was the largest petition to be tabled in the Parliament of Victoria in the 19th century. Comprising many fabric-backed sheets of paper glued together and rolled onto a cardboard spindle, the ‘Monster Petition’ is approximately 260 metres long [800 feet] by 200 millimetres wide [20 cms wide/8 inches]. It bears the statements ‘that government of the People, by the People and for the People should mean all the People, not half’, and ‘that all Adult Persons should have a voice in Making the Laws which they are required to obey’. It is a visual legacy of the important efforts of grassroots Australian women’s movements and is representative of the development of Australia’s democracy. It was a catalyst for other Australian states’ women to lodge petitions in their respective parliaments; while South Australia’s suffrage petition was successful sooner than Victoria’s, none was as large as the Victorian petition... From https://www.amw.org.au/register/listings/womens-suffrage-petitions-1891-1894 The massive roll was a startling and concrete evidence of the desire of women for the vote! Perhaps something similar could be used to push the PR fight to legislators... =========================
The story of the 50-year fight for the vote is presented in the documentary film "Utopia Girls How women got the vote" available for free viewing on the Tubi website.
Unfortunately although South Australia was first in world to grant women right to be elected, South Australia was slow to actually elect women or to see women run for the Assembly.
Not until 1918 did the first women run for election to the S. A. Assembly, in Adelaide and Sturt. By that time, in Alberta, Canada the first women in the British Empire had not only run for office but two had been elected.
And not until 1959 was the first woman elected to the S. A. Assembly.
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‘that government of the People, by the People and for the People should mean all the People, not half’, ‘that all Adult Persons should have a voice in Making the Laws which they are required to obey’ These statement apply to suffrage and also they apply to having an effective vote as under PR. South Australia's Catherine Helen Spence was active in the fight for suffrage but at one stage, she said she considered reform to PR (STV in particular) more pressing than that of female suffrage itself (South Australian Register April 1893 online as per Wiki: "Catherine Helen Spence")
Her international leadership was such that when ranked voting came to Canada -- it used first in government elections in Lethbridge municipal elections in 1913 -- it was known as "Hare-Spence PR". This term was not actually accurate as Lethbridge used ranked voting to elect single members so it was Instant-runoff voting and not PR at all.
Lethbridge did get STV eventually - when it was simply known as PR.
Lethbridge is one of few cases where IRV did lead to STV.
And it is not an positive case - despite 15 years of the use of ranked voting/IRV, Lethbridge only used STV for one city election before dropping ranked voting altogether.
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The roll-shaped petition seems to have been possible because each signer put her name on a separate document each perhaps 8.5 X 11, and the documents were pasted end to end on a massive roll of fabric.
much more eye-catching than a pile of papers (or a number on a computer screen)
But also definitely larger than it absolutely needed to be...
something to think about for Canadian petitions
and it has nice historical connections, if the media take up on it...
hopefully we would see this type of explanation if we used the prop today.
" A similar roll-shaped petition was presented in 1894 when women in South Australia fought for the right to vote and were the first women in the world to get the right to elect their own to the state parliament."
This is a bit fudged - After 1894 of course men as well as women were able to vote for women candidates.
that is, if any women ran as candidates.
but despite their early start, no women ran for Sth. Aus. state legislature until 1918. By then Canada (Alberta) had actually elected two women MLAs.
The first South Australia woman to be elected to the Sth. Aus. legislature was not until 1959, 65 years after winning the right.
What was legally possible was it seems not popular on the ground.
and we can't blame party-list PR as Australia used STV. it did not use MMP where parties might dictate to women voters which man their party vote would elect.
(just blame a macho cowboy culture, maybe)
Australia, despite its use of STV (and AV (Instant-runoff voting)) in national elections, had election of women later than Canada.
first to be elected to national parliament
Canada 1921 Agnes MacPhail
Australia - 1943 Dame Enid Lyons, in the Australian House of Representatives and Senator Dorothy Tangney, became the first women in the federal Parliament
first to lead their party to success in general election
Canada - 1993 The first woman to become premier by winning a general election was Catherine Callbeck in Prince Edward Island
Australia 2009 Queenland's Anna Bligh become the first woman to lead party that won a general election.
and same for first woman elected to state legislature, first woman to serve as state premier,
and so on...
Canadian women have right to be proud of their past successes...
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