Australian Women's Justice

This book explores how women spearheaded the democratic suffrage campaign in colonial Queensland engaging with international debates on women’s activism, leadership, advocacy, print culture, and social movements.

Australian Women’s Justice provides a nuanced reading of the diversity and differences of the women’s movement in Queensland, from the time of first white colonisation, federation to World War 1 by new research on key women’s organisations: notably the Women’s Equal Franchise Association and the Women’s Peace Army. Framed through the lives of women suffrage participants, including their encounters with First Nations women, it also looks beyond microhistory to explore broader themes of the intersection of race, gender, property, war, and empire in the colonial context. Campaigns for enfranchisement and property rights and against conscription connect this story with larger international movements for women and labour, and organisations such as the League of Nations.

This book will be of interest to students and researchers of Australian feminism and suffragism, as well as historians of feminist, labour, and peace movements both in Australia and internationally.

Author Biography

Deborah Jordan, Research Fellow, in History at Monash (adjunct) and Griffith University; Petherick Reader, National Library of Australia; and award-winning professional historian; specialises in research on women at the intersection of history, literature, and environment, addressing issues of gender, race and class. She has recently completed a selection of the love letters of the writers Nettie and Vance Palmer 1909-1914, and she was the lead researcher on climate change narratives for Australian Literature Online database at the University of Queensland.