Australia, however, was the first country in the world to give women both the right to vote in federal elections and the right to be elected to parliament on a national basis. Britain and the United States, on the other hand, did not give women the right to vote until after the First World War. Women in Saudi Arabia did not get to vote until 2015.
But women in Victoria, Australia, actually had the right to vote back in 1863, when the Electoral Act 1863 gave "all persons" listed on local municipal rolls the right to vote in elections. Some women in Victoria obviously realized they were actually "persons", and so, they took advantage of this law and voted in local elections. A newspaper article reported:
“At one of the polling booths in the Castlemaine district a novel sight was witnessed. A coach filled with ladies drove up, and the fair occupants alighted and recorded their votes.”
The Argus, 5 November 1864, p 4.
The accidental enfranchisement of women was taken away in 1865 when the law was changed.
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| Suffragette movement in Queensland, 1909. |
