- Entry type: Organisation
- Entry ID: AWE0733
The Victorian Women’s Suffrage Society
(From 1884 – 1908)- Occupation Women's Rights Organisation
Summary
The Victorian Women’s Suffrage Society, the first women’s suffrage society in Australia, was founded in 1884 largely due to the efforts of Henrietta Dugdale and Annie Lowe. Dugdale, very much a ‘freethinker’, claimed to been Victoria’s first activist for women’s suffrage-having publicly advocated women’s suffrage since 1868, along with married women’s property rights and the admission of women to the universities. In 1883 she published a utopian novel, A Few Hours in a Far Off Age, which she used as a vehicle for her then radical ideas about education, marriage, Christianity and rational dress for women. The Society’s platform was ‘To obtain the same political privileges for women as now possessed by male voters’. It had both male and female members.
Details
Archival note:
As of 2003, it appears that there is no specific collection of papers relating to the Society. Its activities were, however, extensively reported in the Melbourne press and women’s journals, particularly, for the years 1900-1905, Vida Goldstein’s The Australian Woman’s Sphere.
Published resources
- Resource
- Book