Unbridling the Tongues of Women - The University of Adelaide

Unbridling the tongues of women
If Dorothy Paynter was right, then the woman inhibited from voting had no need of
anyone’s advice about how to vote: their political understanding was already acute.
However, their numbers were probably relatively small: F. W. Holder, treasurer in
Kingston’s government, declared that the percentage of women who registered was
‘very high’. Of those enrolled, the percentage who went to the polls in 1896 was
marginally higher (66.44%) than the percentage of men who voted (66.33%). 77
Spence continued to offer educational opportunities for potential voters, delivering
lectures on subjects as diverse as the anarchist Prince Kropotkin, finance in
South Australia, and Susan B. Anthony. 78 Her conviction that women should learn
to participate in public life, for their own benefit and for that of the whole society,
never wavered. She urged acceptance of political responsibility upon the old scholars
of ‘Ladies’ schools’ and nurses alike. 79 But she also complained that South Australian
women were not voting ‘as women’, but as their husbands and fathers voted. 80 She
saw the remedy for such dependence in organisation.
At first she was content to support the bodies springing up in the wake of the
victory of 1894. In August 1895, she addressed the Women’s League, the body
formed by members of the now defunct Women’s Suffrage League, on the need for
solidarity among women, as women, ‘apart from all considerations of class and party’.
81 However her acquaintance with the international women’s movement, and her
growing friendship with feminists in other Australian colonies who looked to South
Australia and to Spence as a ‘Pioneer Woman’ for support, led her to decide that the
multifarious activities of the local feminists would be strengthened by affiliation with
a central body, a national council of women. The International Council of Women
formed in London in 1888, through the national councils affiliated with it, provided
a means of co-operating in specific enterprises for organisations that were not otherwise
connected. 82 Some South Australians had attempted to found a national council
of women as early as 1889, but they had failed. It was 1902 before a public meeting
in Adelaide formed a council, with Spence as one of its vice-presidents, and that was
after councils had been established in New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania. 83
Spence believed that the council would give South Australian women impetus for
further work, as well as organisation. 84 In 1905 she argued for federation of the state
councils ‘for the purpose of interaction and combined action’. She urged, as well,
inclusion of delegates from associations of teachers, university graduates and nurses,
and for smaller subscriptions which would admit less financially comfortable women
to membership. 85 Despite her efforts, the South Australian council of women faded
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