Tasmania’s first ladies: Dame Enid Lyons (left) was the first woman elected to the Commonwealth of Australia Parliament and later the first female cabinet Minister while Hon. Laura Giddings, MP, (right) is the first woman t Premier of Tasmania .
Aboriginal society as illustrated by this quote from Milestones for Tasmanian Women.
“Aboriginal people inhabited
Trowunna (Tasmania) for up to 40,000 years before white settlement and practiced a hunter and gatherer economy. Aboriginal women were recorded by the first French and British explorers as being outstanding hunters, harvesting a variety of seafood, birds, eggs and small land animals. The Tasmanian Aborigines had a rich cultural and social tradition, made unique by their isolation from mainland tribes. Colonization by the English changed the landscape of Tasmania and almost destroyed the original inhabitants of Tasmania. The resilience of Aboriginal women
is shown by the continuity of their culture and we pay tribute to the women of Trowunna.”
There were notable women of influence including Lady Jane Franklin, wife of Governor and Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin, who not only influenced her husband’s policies but also influenced the middle and upper middle class European society at the time. These early historical influences had a strong effect in a tiny and isolated society, and probably laid the foundations for a modern society where women and their opinions are a powerful influence. Women have always been agents of change in Tasmania throughout history and
across all aspects of Tasmanian life.
Securing the vote The women’s suffrage movement in Tasmania grew out of other organizations with interests in sanitation and temperance. The Women's Sanitary Association (1891) tried to bring about sanitary reform and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (1892) tried to have liquor banned, but both were reportedly more successful in achieving the vote for women. Feminism in Tasmania, along with its counterpart movements in other states, was largely a product of the twentieth century and can be dated from the late stages of the nineteenth century, fuelled largely by the demand for female
suffrage. The Woman's Christian Temperance Union took up the campaign for female suffrage in earnest by 1893. In 1896 members Jessie Rooke and Georgiana Kermode travelled the state organizing a series of public meetings that were addressed by Members of Parliament and other prominent citizens supporting a resolution “That the franchise be extended to the women of Tasmania as an act of common Justice”. A further tour undertaken by Rooke in 1898 gathered thousands of signatures in favour of female suffrage. Petitions were presented to Parliament in 1895, 1896 and 1898 before the House of Assembly passed women's suffrage only to have it defeated in the Legislative Council.