Women's Suffrage: A Short History of a Great MovementFawcett, Millicent Garrett, Dame
Philosophy
Women's Suffrage: A Short History of a Great Movement
Fawcett, Millicent Garrett, Dame
Women -- Suffrage -- Great Britain
This table shows that men and women who are on the electoral roll vote
in almost the same proportion. The number of votes actually polled
compared with the number on the register is, of course, to some extent
affected by the number of constituencies in which there is no contest,
or in which the result is regarded as a foregone conclusion; but this
consideration affects both sexes alike. It is impossible for reasons of
space to enter in detail in this little book upon the history in each
of the Australian States of the adoption of women's suffrage. But it
is well known that every one of the States forming the Commonwealth of
Australia has now enfranchised its women, and that one of the first
acts of the Commonwealth Parliament in 1902 was to grant the suffrage
to women. The complete list of dates of women's enfranchisement in New
Zealand and Australia will be found in _The Brief Review of the Women's
Suffrage Movement_, which concludes this little book.
When the Premiers and other political leaders from the overseas
Dominions of Great Britain were in London for the Coronation and
Imperial Conference of 1911, the representatives of Australia and New
Zealand frequently expressed both in public and in private their entire
satisfaction with the results of women's suffrage. Mr. Fisher, the
Premier of the Commonwealth, constantly spoke in this sense: "There
is no Australian politician who would nowadays dare to get up at a
meeting and declare himself an enemy.... It has had most beneficial
results.... He had not the slightest doubt that women's votes had had
a good effect on social legislation.... The Federal Parliament took
a strong stand upon the remuneration of women, and the minimum wage
which was laid down applied equally to women and men for the same work"
(_Manchester Guardian_, June 3, 1911). On another occasion Mr. Fisher
said that so far from women's suffrage causing any disunion between
men and women, "the interest which men took in women's affairs when
women had got the vote was wonderful" (_Manchester Guardian_, June 10,
1911). Sir William Lyne, Premier of New South Wales, said: "When the
women were enfranchised in Australia they proceeded at each election to
purify their Parliament, and they had gone on doing so, and now he was
proud to say their Parliament was one of the model Parliaments of the
world" (_Manchester Guardian_, August 1, 1911). The Hon. John Murray
of Victoria and the Hon. A. A. Kirkpatrick spoke in the same sense.
Indeed the evidence favourable to the working of women's suffrage is
overwhelming, and is given not only by men who have always supported
it, but by those who formerly opposed it, and have had the courage to
acknowledge that as the result of experience they have changed their
views. Among these may be mentioned Sir Edmund Barton, the first
Premier of the Commonwealth, and the late Sir Thomas Bent, the Premier
of Victoria, under whose administration women were enfranchised in
that State.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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