• Entry type: Organisation
  • Entry ID: AWE0652

Queensland Women’s Electoral League

  • Former name Queensland Women's Electoral Union
(From 1903 – )
  • Occupation Women's suffrage organisation

Summary

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.

Published resources

  • Book
    • Proud to be a rebel : the life and times of Emma Miller, Young, Pam, 1926-, 1991
    • Votes for women : the Australian story, Lees, Kirsten., 1995
  • Resource
  • Edited Book
    • Women in Australia : an annotated guide to records, Daniels, Kay, Murnane, Mary, Picot, Anne and National Research Program (Australia), 1977

Archival resources

  • John Oxley Library, Manuscripts and Business Records Collection
    • Queensland Women's Electoral League
    • OM71-47 Queensland Women's Electoral League Records 1903-1967
    • Margaret Ogg Fund: List of names for appeal letters: 1953

Related entries


  • Related Women
    • Longman, Irene Maud (1877 - 1964)
  • Related Organisations
    • Women's Equal Franchise Association (1894 - 1905)
    • Brisbane Women's Club (1908 - )
  • Member
    • Herring, Violet Muriel (1880 - 1966)
  • Membership
    • Griffith, Mary Harriett (1849 -1930)
    • Bedford, Mary Josephine (1861 - 1955)
  • Foundation Member
    • Corrie, Christina Jane (1867 - 1937)