ABSTRACT
Packed public town meetings set up dedicated associations to work for the women’s vote in 1894 across Queensland, after New Zealand women won the vote. Deep divisions surfaced between ‘revolutionaries’ and ‘aristocrats’, that is those who wanted an expedient vote on the same terms as men and those who wanted justice and the adult suffrage. At a Brisbane meeting, when the men were voted out of the meeting, a supposed ‘cat fight’ went viral in the press. Drawing on all new material, political conflict is addressed in terms of competing notions of identity across class and ethnic divides. An initial prestigious suffrage Council was formed, but days later most influential women resigned, some to form a second dedicated suffrage organisation.
While the conservative press complained that the women’s movement was hijacked by the Labor Party, the radical press thundered against the property vote, highlighting the powerful role of the media in framing women’s debates. Immediately both groups, the democratic suffragists and the advocates of expediency, set up petitions, the strategy used by New Zealand and South Australian women. In this account of a social movement coalescing, told through the personal histories of those involved, the dynamics in play are clarified when they are repeated across the regions.
