You Daughters Of Freedom – Clare Wright

As per the Author’s Note, You Daughters Of Freedom is “an evidence-based non-fiction account of how Australia became the first nation in the world to give white women full political equality”. If you’d always heard (as I had, prior to reading this book) that New Zealand was the “first”, that might be because our Kiwi cousins did in fact give (some) women the right to vote first – but it was Australia who first granted (some) women the right to vote and to be elected as parliamentary representatives. And that’s just the beginning of what you’ll learn in this incredible book.

Why does a century-old battle for women’s suffrage matter now? Isn’t that over and done with? As Wright says early in You Daughters Of Freedom: “Given the present state of disillusionment with democracy, it is important to remember that people once cared so very much about defending it, sharing in it, and exercising their right to it,” (page 9-10).

Rest assured that Wright doesn’t ignore the complicating factors of race and class in her history of women’s enfranchisement. The fact that it was only white women who were granted political equality (while First Nations people of any sex weren’t even counted in the census) isn’t just acknowledged in You Daughters Of Freedom, but woven into the very telling of the tale. And yet, Wright doesn’t allow Australia’s ugly colonial past and inherited classism to overshadow the very real victories won by women against oppression.

Clare Wright’s epic history traces the history of Australian women’s suffrage through the stories of five key figures in the fight: Vida Goldstein, Nellie Martel, Dora Montefiore, Muriel Matters, and Dora Meeson Coates. Each played a critical role in the campaign for votes for women, both here in Australia and overseas, and yet they’re far from household names a century later.

Their stories stretch across three acts in You Daughters Of Freedom. The vote for (white) women in Australia is won by the end of the first act – the remainder of the book focuses on what the suffragists did with it, primarily those who travelled to England to join the fight for the same rights to be extended to women of the motherland.

My favourite act of defiance in the fight – of all those listed in this long, long book (479 pages!) – was the 1911 UK census. Suffragettes and sympathisers were fed up with being ignored and strung along by politicians making empty promises, but they were hamstrung by Emmeline Pankhurst’s “truce” (a pause on violent protest pending the passage of the controversial Conciliation Bill). So, they came together in an act of collective civil disobedience: if women didn’t “count” as electorates, they would refuse to be counted in the census. They threw parties to avoid census takers, they stayed in safe houses, they wandered the streets, they wrote “no vote, no census” on the forms, all undermining the government’s attempt to capture a comprehensive picture of the population. It might not be as flashy as chaining themselves to the grille of the women’s viewing area in Parliament (as Muriel Matters did in one particularly memorable protest), but to my mind it’s the most effective kind of protest, beating the bureaucrats at their own game.

Reading You Daughters Of Freedom, I found myself infuriated anew with the whitewashing of the suffragettes and their contemporary suffragists. Too often, they are depicted in history books as pretty girls in petticoats who asked politely for political rights (when they are depicted at all). In reality, these women were fierce and indefatigable. In England, they were militant – occasionally violent. We can learn a lot from the suffragists and suffragettes, especially in the present political moment (ahem), so I’m endlessly grateful to Wright for this comprehensive reconstruction of the complete and true historical narrative.

Read You Daughters Of Freedom on audiobook via Libro.fm here.