Australian Federation of Women Voters

Delegates to the 3rd Triennial Inter-state Conference of the Federation, Melbourne, May 1930

The Australian Federation of Women Voters (AFWV), previously known as The Australian Federation of Women's Societies for Equal Citizenship was founded in 1921 as a national lobby group in the interests of women's rights post suffrage and "...for three decades it was in the vanguard of the progressive women's movement in Australia."^[1] The federation had an official publication, entitled The Dawn, which had existed from 1918.^[2]

Achievements of the Federation included:^[2]

• Obtaining the representation of the first woman as an Australian delegate to the Assembly of the League of Nations in 1922
• Attaining the appointment of members of its affiliated groups to the League of Nations Assembly in 1928, 1935 and 1936.
• In 1937 the Federation compiled a memorandum on the Status of Women, showing sex discrimination was endemic in Australian law. The report was included as an annex to the report prepared by the Government on the same subject and forwarded to the Secretariat of the League of Nations. In 1947 the Federation prepared a second document on the status of women.

First discussed at the triennial Woman's Christian Temperance Union national conference in Perth in 1918, the Federation was established straight after the next gathering in Melbourne in 1921. Bessie Rischbieth (Western Australia) was elected president and Elizabeth Nicholls (South Australia), Annie Carvosso (Queensland) and Mary Jamieson Williams (New South Wales) were elected vice-presidents.^[1]

The Federation existed until 1974, and was largely superseded by the Women's Electoral Lobby in 1972.^[2]

References

External links

• Australian Federation of Women Voters in The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia
• Records of The Australian Federation of Women Voters in the National Library of Australia (finding aid)