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Our Centenary of Women’s Suffrage

Standing for election – the female experience

Selina Anderson: The House of Representatives

Selina Sarah Elizabeth Anderson stood for election in the seat of Dalley (NSW); the electorate covered Leichhardt, Annandale, Balmain and part of Glebe. On the ninth of December the Daily Telegraph published her photo and brief biography, along with several other candidates. She was described as an artist by profession, and it was noted that she had ‘the distinction of being the only woman seeking election to the House of Representatives’. She was identified as a protectionist candidate and as an active member of the Women’s Political Labor League. The Sydney Morning Herald reported that Miss Selina Anderson had been assisted by several speakers from unionist circles at her concluding campaign meetings, ‘which were numerously attended’.

Selina Anderson received 17% of the votes recorded, and did not forfeit her deposit, as the third candidate standing in the division did. The Daily Telegraph reported that ‘many more women voted than men, and they did their business in a manner that showed business’. In fact the female vote in the electorate was only 54 higher than the male (8812 as against 8758). Dalley was one of the seven NSW electorates with more women than men enrolled; however, the turn-out rate for women was not as high as in some other electorates, and not as high as for the men in Dalley.

The night after the election Selina addressed a meeting of the electors of Dalley, and according to the Telegraph’s report – stated her intention to lodge a challenge against the election on the ground of illegal interference with voters at some of the booths. (No further action on this is apparent.)

Nellie Martel and Mary Ann Bentley: The Senate

Nellie Alma Martel and Mary Ann Moore Bentley nominated for the Senate in New South Wales. Their candidatures were not viewed favourably by some women’s organisations. At a meeting of the Women’s Political League in Bathurst it was unanimously resolved that the time had not yet arrived when women should be nominated as Senators. A meeting of the Women’s Social and Political League was reported as carrying, practically unanimously, a motion that the league should not select and support some women for the Senate, even though the league had received letters from Mrs Bentley and Mrs Martel asking for support. Two other women’s political associations had written to the League, stating that their members disapproved of the nomination of women for the Senate. This attitude was condemned in a later letter to the Daily Telegraph from an original member from the beginning of the original “Women’s Suffrage League”, earnestly asking ‘why is this? Have women still no confidence in each other?’

Mrs Bentley had announced her candidature by the middle of October. As reported in the Daily Telegraph, the local mayors presided at campaign meetings in Windsor and Granville. At both meetings she advocated a tax upon land values, which would help private enterprise. ‘Protection had yet to be proved as a creator of work, as up to the present the reverse had rather been the case….’ Freetrade, Mrs Bentley concluded, was the saviour of democracy. The Advertiser noted that Mrs Moore Bentley had been addressing meetings in the eastern suburbs of Sydney, and that she advocated ‘raising the federal revenue by taxation on land values’.

For several years Nellie Martel had been an active member of the Womanhood Suffrage League (WSL) (in which Rose Scott was a major figure), but she became unhappy with the centralised decision-making processes of the organisation. With other dissident WSL members, such as the Golding sisters, she founded the Women’s Progressive Association in 1901. This group of suffragists were more lower middle or working-class in origin, with Labor oriented political sympathies. 10

Mrs Martel ensured some press coverage when she wrote to the Daily Telegraph, to query that paper’s support for Messrs. Neil, Pulsford and Gray, the three so-called ‘selected freetrade candidates’. She claimed that the selection process involved only a small committee (of which the three were members), and that the Freetrade League, in which she claimed she was active, had nothing to do with the selection. She stated that she would not have been a candidate if the Freetrade League had made the selection, and condemned the evil of caucus voting and minority rule – ‘we do not want the same tactics resorted to in the great cause of free trade’.

In response, the Daily Telegraph argued that ‘exercising the franchise and sitting in the Legislature do not necessarily go together’. There was still prejudice amongst women and men, against women going into Parliament. Of the three selected freetrade candidates, two had already rendered valuable services as Senators, the third had polled well at the previous elections, and there was ‘every ground for believing that he will make an admirable representative’. Mrs Martel could serve the freetrade cause by promptly announcing her retirement from the contest. ‘She cannot win a seat by persisting in her candidature, but it is possible that she may imperil a seat. Votes given to her instead of to one of the selected three will be clear gifts to the enemy.’

Just a few weeks before the election, a libel suit hit the law reports, both in Sydney and in some interstate newspapers. Annie Golding, the plaintiff, was an associate of Mrs Martel, and the case related to reports of alleged activities at a meeting of the WPA which had appeared in the ‘Watchman’ Newspaper. During cross-examination there was extensive reference to Mrs Martel as president of the WPA, with dark hints of sectarian intrigue and divisions. A verdict was returned in favour of the plaintiff on 7 December, nine days before the election.

On 9 December Mrs Martel addressed a large audience from the balcony of the Grand View Hotel, Paddington. She delivered an address upon federal politics and claimed equality of womenhood with manhood.

Mary Ann Bentley came tenth and Nellie Martel eleventh in the overall field of twelve Senate candidates in NSW. The three candidates elected were strongly supported by both the Daily Telegraph and the Sydney Morning Herald, as the ‘Freetrade 3’ for the Senate. The two women each polled about one tenth of the votes for the leading candidate.

Vida Goldstein: The Senate

Vida Goldstein, a high profile suffragist over many years, nominated for the Senate in Victoria. This action was criticised by some in the movement as potentially damaging to the State campaign for women suffrage – the upper House of the Victorian Parliament had continually blocked votes for women, partly on the grounds that once they could vote, women would want to sit in Parliament. 11

Goldstein campaigned as an independent, although one newspaper commentary listed her as a ‘protectionist’. The strongly free trade Sydney Daily Telegraph commented: ‘Women candidates are apparently going to exercise in politics the same unsophisticated wiles with which they achieve success in social affairs. This is Miss Vida Goldstein’s declaration of fiscal belief:- “Free Trade was not free, and protection did not protect. Too much was made of the fiscal question.”

Vida Goldstein was also the subject of a smear campaign. Four days before election day, there was a brief report in the Argus that ‘Miss Goldstein’s committee advertise today an intimation relating to certain rumours.’ The advertisement read: ‘It has come to the knowledge of Miss Goldstein’s committee that FALSE REPORTS are being spread to damage her candidature. One is that she holds peculiar views about marriage, and is in favour of easy divorce. Her committee desire to give the MOST EMPHATIC DENIAL to this slanderous imputation. Miss Goldstein’s views on marriage are quite normal and she has, both with voice and pen, protested against easy divorce as being directly antagonistic to the stability and purity of the home. Another rumour is that, if elected, she will not be allowed to take a seat in the Federal Parliament. This is not so. Sir John Quick and other of the highest authorities on the Commonwealth Constitution have declared that there is no question as to the right of a properly qualified woman to sit in the Federal Parliament, if elected. Miss Goldstein was brought up, and is, a Protestant, and a regular church attendant.’ The slogan at the bottom of the advertisement read: VOTE FOR THREE MEN and ONE WOMAN.

Two days later there was reference to the statement in a letter to The Age: noting that the advertisement described Miss Vida Goldstein as a regular church attendant, ‘As this rather wide statement might tend to create confusion in voters minds, might one ask whether the lady candidate is not what has been absurdly called “a Christian Scientist”?’ This missive was signed ‘Yours and etc, ONE WHO KNOWS’.

Vida Goldstein came fifteenth out of a field of 18 candidates. She polled 51,497 votes, around 4% of votes cast. She did much better than her overall position in Gippsland and Bendigo; in both divisions she polled more votes than two of those elected. She did not improve on her overall position in Melbourne or Bourke divisions, both of which had more women than men enrolled, and both of which had a relatively high female turn-out rate.

In Melbourne the press had been less uniform than the Sydney papers in their support for candidates, with different tickets endorsed in the Argus and Age. Two of the candidates supported by The Age were elected; both had been sitting Senators. None of those supported by The Argus were successful, although two came fifth and sixth. The pattern of voting in divisions was more variable than in NSW.

A week after the election Vida held a meeting, with an audience of about a hundred, at which she reflected on some of the lessons learned during her candidature. This was given good coverage in The Argus. She said she was beaten but not disgraced. (Applause) She noted that both The Argus and The Age had used their influence against her, and that the Labor party had put out a pamphlet warning electors not to give her a vote, because first as a woman she was not qualified to sit in the Senate, and second she was not a pledged Labor candidate. Another thing she had learned was that women were not going to be degraded by politics, and that large bodies of men would always protect them from insult. The meeting closed after those present were addressed by Miss Raper on the necessity for further organising the women’s vote.

 

  1. Oldfield, A, op. cit., pp. 93-95.
  2. Lees, K 1995, Votes for Women: The Australian Story, Allen and Unwin, St. Leonards, p. 129.

All other quotations come from newspapers of the period held in the microform collection of the National Library of Australia. They include: The Age (Melbourne), The Argus (Melbourne), Daily Telegraph (Sydney), Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney), Brisbane Courier (Brisbane), Hobart Mercury (Hobart), The Advertiser (Adelaide), West Australian (Perth) for the months of November and December 1903.

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