From The Betoota Advocate's Archives: Difficult Women Insist On Voting (1902)

EDWIN HILSTON | Minority Grievances | CONTACT

Published: 4:23 p.m. June. 2, 1902. Updated: 8:47 a.m. June. 3, 1902

Uppity trouble makers across the country are persisting on this senseless crusade to win the vote.

While our nation's politicians try to focus on important issues like tariffs and railway gauge sizes, the growing rabble of noisy women demanding to vote is creating a headache for our relatively new federal government.

So much so, that Prime Minister Edmund Barton has been forced to give in and side with the fairer sex on the issue.

The difficult women have now made it an issue that Barto cannot ignore, with well over a decade of whining and whinging about the right to meddle in elections.

Not only are they demanding that we become just the second country in the world to allow women to vote, but they are also demanding to be allowed to STAND for parliament.

The preposterous request is seemingly being adhered to by Barto, who is forgetting that a woman's place is in the home serving her husband and trying to make domestic life as smooth as possible - not as difficult as possible.

However, it seems like there is no getting in the way of these stubborn mules - with the Prime Minister set to fold and them let them win.

*This article was written shortly before the Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902, which granted women the right to vote and stand for federal Parliament.

Following the success of the difficult women's campaign to be given the vote, 60 years later Australia reluctantly agreed to provide the same rights to the Aboriginal sooks.