• Women’s History Month Gallery 2009
• Australia’s nine parliaments
• Australia’s pioneering parliamentary women
• Promise and progress
Women’s History Month Gallery 2009
This Gallery features the 20 women who were the first to sit in Australia's federal, state and territory parliaments. Each one of these women, from the first in 1921 to the last in 1979, entered a Chamber where she was a curiosity rather than a colleague, her appearance more remarked upon than her ability. We salute these 20 women as pioneers who prepared a path that is still being cleared. They persisted despite the wilderness of discouragement most encountered.
The triathlon of winning the vote, then winning the right to sit, then winning a seat was an extended endurance test – in one State parliament it took an astonishing 64 years. Which State? South Australia, the first to grant the vote to women.
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