Aussie women gain the vote

1902 Australia's Commonwealth Franchise Act came into force, second in the world after New Zealand (more), giving all women the right to vote in federal elections but excluding ‘aboriginal natives of Australia, Asia, Africa or the Islands of the Pacific except New Zealand’ unless they already had the vote at State level (as stipulated in s 41 of Constitution).

The women's vote was gained in Australia by the untiring efforts of some men and many women, including Maybanke Anderson, Rose Scott, Emma Miller, Vida Goldstein and Louisa Lawson (mother of national poet Henry Lawson and called by Rose Scott 'the Mother of Women's Suffrage').

A world chronology of women's electoral rights
The Dawn Club/Womanhood Suffrage League
Lawson & Co: associations with Henry and Louisa Lawson