Clare Wright - You Daughters of Freedom: The Australians Who Won the Vote and Inspired the World

You Daughters of Freedom

FOR THE TEN years after 1902, when Australias suffrage campaigners won the vote for white women, the world looked to this trailblazing young democracy for inspiration.

Clare Wrights epic new history tells the story of that victoryand of Australias role at the forefront of the subsequent international strugglethrough the eyes of five remarkable players: the redoubtable Vida Goldstein, flamboyant Nellie Martel, indomitable Dora Montefiore, daring Muriel Matters, and the self-effacing artist Dora Meeson Coates, who painted the controversial Australian banner carried in the British suffragettes monster marches of 1908 and 1911.

Clare Wrights Stella Prizewinning The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka retold one of Australias foundation stories from a fresh new perspective. In You Daughters of Freedom she brings to life a time when Australian democracy was the envy of the worldand the standard bearer for progress in a shining new century.

You Daughters of Freedom is part two of Clare Wrights Democracy Trilogy, which began with The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka. The final volume will be a history of the 1963 Yirrkala bark petitions.

To my grandmothers

Alice, Sally and Sara

Power concedes nothing without a demand.

It never did and it never will.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS, 1857

This is an evidence-based non-fiction account of how Australia became the first nation in the world to give white women full political equality, and what certain women chose to do with those basic rights and historic privileges.

While I have engaged with the scholarship on gender, race, citizenship, colonialism, imperialism, internationalism and transnationalism to frame my questions going into the archive, and to make sense of what I have found there, what follows is a narrative account predominantly based on primary sources. Three points of clarification are necessary.

First: the issue of precedence. From the passage of the Commonwealth Franchise Act in 1902, white women in Australia enjoyed full and universal adult suffrage: that is, there was nothing in legislation to distinguish them from male voters. No property qualification; the same age and residency requirements. Australian women were eligible to sit in parliament as well as vote. No other women in the world were so entitled until Finland followed suit in 1906. New Zealand women won the vote in 1893, but could not sit in parliament until 1919. Nor was New Zealand a nation, as Australia became in 1901it remained a colony or dominion of Britain until 1947. Women in Wyoming could vote from 1869 and in Utah from 1870 but their enfranchisement was viewed as politically marginal and attracted little global attention.

Second: only white women in Australia were accorded the privilege of the vote. The racial qualifier takes a good deal of the gloss off patriotic gloating. The story told in this book should not be read as a celebratory nationalist narrative, nor be seen to imply a tacit assumption of white womens moral or spiritual superiority.

Finally, the terms suffragist and suffragette are not interchangeable. Suffragists are people who advocate for votes for women. Men can be suffragists, and they were. The term is a generic description of a political position, akin to the terms socialist, capitalist or environmentalist. Suffragettes, by contrast, were a specific group of (mostly) women defined by their membership of certain suffrage organisations at a certain time in British history.

Canberra, 2018

A banner is a thing to float in the wind, to flicker in the breeze, to flirt its colours for your pleasure, to half-show and half-conceal, a device you long to unravel; you do not want to read it, you want to worship it.

MARY LOWNDES

On Banners and Banner-making, 1909

If youre ever in Canberra, Australias national capital, whether for the first time or the one millionth, its worth a visit to Parliament House. The walls have stories to tell.

As you walk from Queens Terrace towards the House of Representatives, you pass the Great Hall to your right. The Great Hall, as its name suggests, is vast, its native timber panelling both warm and sleekthe ambitious veneer of home-grown, post-colonial representation. The Great Hall must be impressive when filled to the gunnels with pollies and punters on feast days like the annual Parliamentary Midwinter Ball, but whenever Ive been to Parliament House its been empty save for huddled groups of Chinese and Indian tourists pointing iPhones in every direction. But I like to pop my head in nonetheless, if only because the Great Hall houses a stunningly beautiful tapestry, conceived by artist Arthur Boyd. According to the parliamentary website, the artwork was executed by The tapestry took fourteen full-time weavers over two years to complete.

On another wall in the Great Hall hangs a sixteen-metre-long embroidery, designed by artist Kay Lawrence and wrought by 500 highly skilled women from all of the Australian state and territory embroidery guildsa logistical challenge that would foster teamwork between women across the country. The embroidery tells the story of human settlement in Australia, from pre-European times to 1900. Both artworks were commissioned for the opening of the new Parliament House in May 1988. The Great Hall is a fitting place to start any female-centric tour of Australian democracy. Crafting the story of the nation has always been womens workon the ground, if rarely in historys written page.

Walk further into the Members Hallthe centre of Parliament House, directly under the flag mastand youll be greeted by a welcoming committee of framed portraits of Australias past prime ministers. Move along the row and watch the sombre frockcoats and bushy moustaches give way to sombre suits and ties and clean-shaven chins. There are also portraits of governors-general in the Members Hall gallery and one of the G-Gs boss, Australias head of state, Queen Elizabeth II, painted in London in 1954 by William Dargie. The portraits constitute part of the Historic Memorials Collection, founded in 1911 by Prime Minister Andrew Fisher.

Only two of the faces in the Members Hall belong to women: Australias first female governor-general, Quentin Bryce (200814) and Australias reigning sovereign, Queen Elizabeth II (1952). Australias first and, to date, only female prime minister, Julia Gillard (201013), has yet to be immortalised in oils.