Like most middle-ranking suffragists, the Sydney schoolteacher Madge Donohoe is largely invisible in Australian historiography. Until widespread newspaper digitisation, the task of uncovering her name, let alone tracing her rise from Kogarah Girls’ School to the British National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies’ executive committee, would have…[Read more]

Over the past decade, historians have situated feminist reformers’ efforts to dismantle the British imperial contagious diseases apparatus at the heart of the transnational turn in women’s history. New Zealand was an early emulator of British prostitution regulations, which provoked an organised repeal campaign in the 1880s, yet the colony is s…[Read more]

Building on detailed research documenting New South Wales’s (NSW) women’s contributions to international exhibitions at the turn of the century, this chapter juxtaposes the Australian Margaret Windeyer’s experiences with the achievements of another soon-to-be enfranchised group of outsiders at the Exposition, Utah’s Mormon women. Emerging from is…[Read more]

Over the past 20 years, suffrage historians have sought to reimagine their field—traditionally tethered to the nation—as an international one. The Australasian suffragists, who strove to overcome their perceived isolation by exchanging print, personnel, and ideas across borders, seem perfect candidates for such revisionist treatment. However, des…[Read more]

In February 1902 the Victorian suffragist Vida Goldstein helped establish the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA) in Washington, D.C. Four months later, the Commonwealth Franchise Act gave white women unprecedented political privileges. Despite these pioneer achievements, Australian women struggled to achieve prominence within the…[Read more]