Australian Politics and Policy - Senior, 2019a

Gender and sexuality in Australian politics
that white women would be eligible to vote and stand for the new Australian
parliament. The Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902 (Cth) established the rights of
whitewomenaged21andovertovoteandstandforparliamentatthenational
level but explicitly excluded ‘any aboriginal native of Australia, Asia, Africa or the
Islands of the Pacific, except New Zealand’, unless they were already enrolled in a
state before 1901.
The achievement of voting rights is often described as legislators ‘giving women
the vote’. However, excluded people were not passive recipients in the process. Major
mobilisations of women through organisations such as the Women’s Christian
Temperance Union and the Australian Women’s Suffrage Society were instrumental
in persuading male legislators and voters, through interventions such as the
260-metre-long Women’s Suffrage Petition presented to the Victorian parliament in
1891, containing 30,000 signatures. 30 Those who opposed extending the franchise
usedargumentssuchastheprospectthatmenmayhavetoperformhouseworkand
childcarebecausewomenwouldbesooccupiedwithcivicconcerns.
As noted above, Federation did not improve the situation for Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander people, and patterns of disempowerment continued. From the
1950s, however, the US civil rights movement inspired Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander people to intensify their efforts to obtain voting rights, among other rights.
It was not until 1962 that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people gained the
right to vote in federal elections.
Using the vote
Many early women political activists rejected the idea of pursuing political power
through the established parties in favour of articulating a maternal civic philosophy
that held itself above the grubbiness of ordinary politics. 31 Atthesametime,women
political activists vigorously encouraged women voters to assess parties on their
merits (particularly their positions on key issues such as child welfare and women’s
economic independence). Echoes of this practice of non-partisan mobilisation
can be seen in organisations such as the Australian Federation of Women Voters
(1921–82) and the Women’s Electoral Lobby (WEL) (1974 onwards). 32
Historically, women as a statistical group 33 havevotedmoreconservativelythan
men in Australia, supporting the Liberal–National (Coalition) parties more than
men and the Australian Labor Party (ALP) less than men. 34 Given that left-wing
parties are more likely to pursue policies supporting women’s economic equality, it
30 Curtin 2014, 312–3.
31 Curtin 2014, 31–4; Koven and Michel 1993.
32 Andrew 2014; Byard 2014.
33 This non-disaggregated measure obscures voting differences by class, race and other factors.
Many women would have been voting less conservatively than white middle- and upper-class
women and men.
34 Curtin 1997.
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