Comparative Perspectives on White and Indigenous Women's Political Citizenship in Queensland: The 1905 Act to Amend the Elections Acts, 1885 to 1899

Abstract

The centenary of the passage in early 1905 of the Act to Amend the Elections Acts, 1885 to 1899, which extended the right to vote to white women in Queensland, marks a moment of great importance in the political and social history of Australia. The high ground of the history of women's suffrage in Australia is undoubtedly the passage of the 1902 Commonwealth Franchise Act that gave all white women in Australia political citizenship: the right to vote and to stand for parliamentary office at the federal level. Obviously this attracted the most attention internationally, given that it placed Australia on the short list of communities that had done so to date; most women in the world had to awa..