The Australian Women's Register

Summary

Alicia Petersen grew up in a small rural community in Tasmania, and worked in the clothing industry. She was a speaker for the Citizens’ Social and Moral Reform League in 1906, and a member of the Women’s Political Association, but maintained a non-party stance. Petersen was a founder and life-president of the Australian Women’s Association, and the first woman in Tasmania to stand as a political candidate. In 1913 she contested the federal seat of Denison but her campaign was sabotaged by the press. She stood again, unsuccessfully, in 1922.