What impact did Mary Lee have on Australia?

She helped form the Women's Suffrage League of South Australia in 1888, serving as secretary and collaborating with the president, Augusta Zadow, a German-born suffragist who was a trained dressmaker and similarly linked her push for the vote to better conditions for working women.

How did Mary Lee help Australia become a federation?

South Australia was the first Australian colony to extend the vote to women. Lee knew that working women needed special protection. She formed a women's union and visited factories to get bosses to pay their female workers more. After the victory of votes for women, a fundraiser was taken up to support her.

How did Vida Goldstein contribute to federation?

Australian women were among the first in the world to gain the federal vote, and in 1903 Goldstein was the first woman to stand for election to a national parliament. Her direct lobbying on various issues of social justice, women's suffrage and women's rights directly influenced many of the Acts of Parliament.

What was Mary Lee's job?

Social activist
Mary Lee/Professions

When did Mary Lee fight for women's rights?

On 13 July 1888 Lee, the Social Purity League and others met and formed the South Australian Women's Suffrage League. She was the association's joint honorary secretary and for six and a half years she fought for women's suffrage.

How did Mary Lee affect democracy?

Mary Lee arrived in South Australia in 1879 at the age of 58 and in 1888 co-founded the Women's Suffrage League. One of the most famous of South Australia's suffragists, Mary Lee, was the main organizer of the 1894 petition.

Monaghan, Ireland
Mary Lee/place of birth

How did Louisa Lawson contribute to democracy?

Louisa Lawson (1848-1920) wrote poetry and short stories and started the Dawn magazine in Sydney in 1888, announcing that it would publicize wrongs against women, fight their battles and sue for their suffrage. From 1889 she led the campaign in New South Wales for women's suffrage. …

What was Mary Lee doing in South Australia?

Mary Lee became secretary of the Women's Suffrage League of South Australia in 1888. She served on the Female Refuge committee, the Distressed Women's and Children's Committee and the Adelaide Sick Poor Fund and was secretary of the Working Women's Trades Union.

What did Mary Lee do for women's suffrage?

What did Mary Lee want for the new century?

Then, as now, women like Mary Lee, Catherine Helen Spence, Augusta Zadow and many others who fought for the betterment of women hoped and believed that the new century would be much better. They hoped to eradicate old problems and make a fresh start. Mary Lee didn't just fight for better conditions for women.

When did the Mary Lee Purity Society start?

She and other Purity Society members, recognizing that women's suffrage was essential to their further improved status, inaugurated the South Australian Women's Suffrage League in July 1888. Through her work in the League, first as co-secretary and soon as secretary, Mary Lee played a large part of South Australian political history.