Queensland Women's Electoral League (1903 - )

The Queensland Women’s Electoral League (QWEL) was an organisation formed in the last stages of the campaign to obtain woman suffrage for white women in Queensland. While the league claimed to have all women’s interests at heart, and that it was to be apolitical, it was very much a liberal-conservative organisation. Although its stated aims included the desire to ‘advance political knowledge among women’, they also included the desire to ‘encourage and preserve private enterprise, and to combat unnecessary interference by the State’. Labor women who attended the QWEL launch in 1903 left once the political agenda became obvious. They went on to form the Women Workers’ Political Organisation in opposition. The Women’s Christian Temperance Organisation, in response to this political wrangling, called upon its own members to avoid ‘the venom of party politics’ and concentrate on the task at hand.

• Queensland Women's Electoral Union (former name)

Related Corporate Bodies

• Women's Equal Franchise Association (1894 - 1905)

  Queensland Woman Suffrage Organisation

See also

• Lees, Kirsten., Votes for women : the Australian story, Allen & Unwin, St. Leonards, N.S.W., 1995, 206 pp. [ Details... ]
• Young, Pam, 1926-, Proud to be a rebel : the life and times of Emma Miller, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, Qld, 1991, 286 pp. [ Details... ]