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18 Adel. L. Rev. 47 (1996)
The Woman Sufferage Movements in the United States and Australia: Concepts of Sufferage, Citizenship and Race

handle is hein.journals/adelrev18 and id is 51 raw text is: Stella Tarrant* THE WOMAN SUFFRAGE MOVEMENTS IN THE UNITED STATES AND AUSTRALIA: CONCEPTS OF SUFFRAGE, CITIZENSHIP AND RACE If de fust woman God ever made was strong enough to turn de world upside down all alone, dese women togedder ... ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again!' T HE woman suffrage movements were conducted in Australia and the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Political agitation for woman suffrage in the United States was begun earlier than in Australia, in the mid-nineteenth century, and took seventy years to achieve its goal. The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, adopted in 1920, guaranteed all women citizens the right to vote; some Native American women were not citizens, and not enfranchised until 1924. The woman suffrage movement in the Australian colonies occurred in the later part of the nineteenth century before, and in the process of, federation. White Australian women were enfranchised nationally by one of the first pieces of legislation of the new federation - the Commonwealth Franchise Act of 1902 - enacted after the adoption of the Australian Constitution in 1901. Some Aboriginal women were not enfranchised until 1962. This paper seeks to provide a comparative account of the two movements and is in three parts. First, I outline the historical progress towards woman suffrage in each country for the purposes of introduction and orientation. Second, I look at the concepts of suffrage and citizenship used in the movements to assert woman's entitlement to vote. Although the Australian movement began at the time of the second major phase of the United States movement after the Civil War, the concepts and arguments used in each campaign were remarkably similar. This is because the movements shared important intellectual sources and because there was a cross-over of activists. Prominent Australian suffragists worked for periods in the United States and American women worked in Australia. Third, the place of race in each movement is examined. Focus is primarily on the relationship between black and white peoples of each country. It is acknowledged that this meaning of race is far from comprehensive and that exclusion from suffrage of women of many other races is an essential part of the story of suffrage in each democracy. Insofar as the decision to focus on black and white races is B Juris (Hon), LL B (UWA), LL M (Yale), Lecturer, Law School University of Western Australia. I would like to thank Professor Robert Gordon, Robyn Carroll and Megan Warner for their comments on previous drafts of this article. Sojourner Truth, account given in Stanton, Anthony and Gage (eds), History of Woman Suffrage (Ayer Co, New Hampshire 1985) Vol I, p116.

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