Vida Jane Mary Goldstein (April 13, 1869 – August 15, 1949) was an early
AustraliaAustralia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the continental mainland , the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans...
n feminist politician who campaigned for woman suffrage and social reform.
Vida Goldstein was born in
Portland, VictoriaThe city of Portland is the oldest European settlement in what is now the state of Victoria, Australia. It is the main urban centre of the Shire of Glenelg. It is located on Portland Bay.-History:...
, the eldest child of Jacob Goldstein and Isabella (née Hawkins). Her father was an Irish immigrant and officer in the Victorian Garrison Artillery. Her mother was a
suffragetteWomen's suffrage is the right of women to vote, and historically includes the economic and political reform movement aimed at extending suffrage to women. The movement's modern origins lie in France in the 18th century. Of currently existing independent countries, New Zealand was the first to give...
, a
teetotallerTeetotalism is the practice and promotion of complete abstinence from alcoholic beverages. A person who practices teetotalism is called a teetotaler or teetotaller or is simply said to be teetotal.Some common reasons for choosing teetotalism are religious, health, family, philosophical, fear of...
and worked for social reform.
Vida Jane Mary Goldstein (April 13, 1869 – August 15, 1949) was an early
AustraliaAustralia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the continental mainland , the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans...
n feminist politician who campaigned for woman suffrage and social reform.
Early years
Vida Goldstein was born in
Portland, VictoriaThe city of Portland is the oldest European settlement in what is now the state of Victoria, Australia. It is the main urban centre of the Shire of Glenelg. It is located on Portland Bay.-History:...
, the eldest child of Jacob Goldstein and Isabella (née Hawkins). Her father was an Irish immigrant and officer in the Victorian Garrison Artillery. Her mother was a
suffragetteWomen's suffrage is the right of women to vote, and historically includes the economic and political reform movement aimed at extending suffrage to women. The movement's modern origins lie in France in the 18th century. Of currently existing independent countries, New Zealand was the first to give...
, a
teetotallerTeetotalism is the practice and promotion of complete abstinence from alcoholic beverages. A person who practices teetotalism is called a teetotaler or teetotaller or is simply said to be teetotal.Some common reasons for choosing teetotalism are religious, health, family, philosophical, fear of...
and worked for social reform. Both parents were devout Christians with strong social consciences. They would birth to four more children after Vida - three daughters (Lina, Elsie and Aileen) and a son (Selwyn) .
After living in Portland and Warrnambool, the Goldsteins moved to
MelbourneMelbourne is the capital city and most populous city of the State of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne city centre is the anchor of the larger geographical area and statistical division known as the Greater Melbourne metropolitan area – of which Melbourne is...
in 1877. Here Jacob became heavily involved in charitable and social welfare causes, working closely with the Melbourne Charity Organisation Society, the Women's Hospital Committee, the Cheltenham Men's Home and the labour colony at Leongatha. Although an anti-suffragist Jacob Goldstein believed strongly in education and self-reliance. He engaged a private governess to educate his four daughters and Vida was sent to
Presbyterian Ladies' CollegeThe Presbyterian Ladies' College, Melbourne, is an independent, Presbyterian, day and boarding school predominantly for girls, located in Burwood, an eastern suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia....
in 1884, matriculating in 1886. When the family income was affected by the depression in Melbourne during the 1890s, Vida and her sisters, Aileen and Elsie, ran a co-educational preparatory school in
St KildaSt Kilda is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 6 km south from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is the City of Port Phillip...
. Opening in 1892, the 'Ingleton' school would run successfully out of the family home on Alma Road for the next six years.
Suffrage Career
In 1891, Isabella Goldstein recruited the 22-year old Vida to assist in collecting signatures for a women's suffrage petition. She would stay on the periphery of the women's movement through the 1890s, but her primary interest during this period was with her school and urban social causes - particularly the National Anti-Sweating League and the Criminology Society. This work have her first-hand experience of women's social and economic disadvantages, which she would come to believe were a product of their political inequality .
Through this work she became friends with
Annette Bear-CrawfordAnnette Bear-Crawford was a women's suffragist and federationist in Victoria.-Early life:Annette Bear was born in East Melbourne, her family was wealthy and she spent her childhood in Australia and England. She had three brothers and five sisters...
, with who she jointly campaigned for social issues including women's franchise and in organising an appeal for the Queen Victoria Hospital for women. After the death of Bear-Crawford in 1899, she took on a much greater organising and lobbying role for suffrage and became secretary for the United Council for Woman Suffrage. She became a popular public speaker on women's issues, orating before packed halls around Australia and eventually Europe and the United States. In 1902 she travelled to the United States, speaking at the International Women Suffrage Conference (where she was elected secretary), gave evidence in favour of female suffrage before a committee of the
United States CongressThe United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States of America, consisting of two houses, the Senate and the House of Representatives. Both senators and representatives are chosen through direct election....
, and attended the International Council of Women Conference.
In 1903, as an Independent with the support of the newly formed
Women's Federal Political Association, she became the first woman in the
British EmpireThe British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom, that had originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height it was...
to stand for election to a national parliament (Australian women had won the right vote in Federal elections in 1902). She received a suprisingly high 51,497 votes (nearly 5% of the total ballots) but failed to secure a senate seat. The loss prompted her to concentrate on female education and political organisation, which she did through the Women's Political Organization (WPA) and her monthly journal the Australian Women's Sphere, which she described as the "organ of communication amongst the, at one time few, but now many, still scattered, supporters of the cause" . She stood for parliament again in 1910, 1913 and 1914; her fifth and last bid was in 1917 for a senate seat on the principle of international peace, a position which appears to have lost her votes. She always campaigned on fiercely independent and strongly left-wing platforms which made it difficult for her to attract high support at the ballot. Her campaign secretary in 1913 was
Doris BlackburnDoris Amelia Blackburn was an Australian activist and Member of Parliament.She was born Doris Amelia Hordern in Melbourne, Victoria, and became involved in women's rights and peace issues from a young age and served as the campaign secretary of Vida Goldstein, the first woman to stand for election...
who was later successfully elected to the
Australian House of RepresentativesThe House of Representatives is one of the two houses of the Parliament of Australia; it is the lower house, the upper house being the Senate.-Origins and role:The House is presided over by the Speaker....
Through the 1890s to the 1920s, Vida actively support women's rights and emancipation in a variety of fora, including the National Council of Women, the Victorian Women's Public Servants' Association and the Women Writers' Club. She actively lobbied parliament on issues such as equality of property rights, birth control, equal naturalisation laws, the creation of a system of children's courts and raising the age of marriage consent. Her writings in various periodicals and papers of the time were influential in the social life of Australia during the first twenty years of the 20th century .
In 1909, having close the
Sphere in 1905 in order to dedicate herself more fully to political campaigns, she founded a second newspapers -
Woman Voter. It became a supporting mouthpiece for her later political campaigns. Of Australian suffragettes in this period Goldstein was possibly the only one to garner an noteworthy international reputation. In early 1911 Goldstein visited
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
at the behest of the
Women's Social and Political UnionThe Women's Social and Political Union was the leading militant organisation campaigning for Women's suffrage in the United Kingdom...
. Her speeches around the country drew huge crowds and her tour was touted as 'the biggest thing that has happened in the women movement for sometime in England' . Her trip in England concluded with the foundation of the Australia and New Zealand Women Voters Association, an organisation dedicated to ensuring that the British Parliament would not undermine suffrage laws in the antipodean colonies.
She was quoted from the period as saying that woman represents "the mercury in the thermometer of the race. Her status shows to what degree it has risen out of barbarism." Australian feminist historian Patricia Grimshaw
http://www.history.unimelb.edu.au/about/staff/grimshaw.html has noted that Goldstein, like other white women of her day, considered "barbarism" to characterise Australian aboriginal society and culture; thus Indigenous women in Australia were not believed to be eligible for citizenship or the vote..
Later Career
Throughout the First World War she was an ardent pacifist, became chairman of the Peace Alliance and formed the Women's Peace Army in 1915. She recruited
Adela PankhurstAdela Constantia Mary Pankhurst Walsh was a British-Australian suffragette, political organizer, and co-founder of both the Communist Party of Australia and the Australia First Movement....
, recently arrived from England as an organiser. In 1919 she accepted an invitation to represent Australian women at a Women's Peace Conference in Zurich. In the ensuing three year absence abroad her public involvement with Australian feminism gradually ended, with the Women's Political Association dissolving and her publications ceasing print. She did however continue to campaign for a number of public causes, and continued to believe fervently in the unique and unharnessed contributions of women in society. Her writings in latter decades became decidedly more sympathetic to socialist and labour politics, and many of her later articles discussed the desirability of a new social order based on socialist and Christian principles .
In the last decades of her life her focus turned more intently to her faith and spiritualism as a solution to the world's problems. She became increasingly involved with the
Christian ScienceChristian Science is a religious belief system founded by Mary Baker Eddy in 1866 and is practiced by members of The First Church of Christ, Scientist. Christian Science asserts that humanity and the universe as a whole are spiritual rather than material in nature and that truth and good are real...
movement - whose Melbourne church she helped found. For the next two decades she would work as a reader, practitioner and healer of the church. Despite many suitors, Vida never married and she lived in her last years with her unmarried sister Aileen and her widowed sister Elsie. She died of cancer in South Yarra on August 15th, 1949 at the age of 80 .
Although her death passed almost unnoticed at the time, Goldstein would later come to be recognised as a pioneer suffragist and important figure in Australian social history and a source of inspiration for many female generations to come. Second Wave Feminism lead to a revival of interest in Goldstein and the publication of
new biographies and journal articles.
In 1984 the
Division of GoldsteinThe Division of Goldstein is an Australian Electoral Division in Victoria. The division was created in 1984, when the former Division of Balaclava was abolished. It is named for Vida Goldstein, an early feminist parliamentary candidate. It is located in the bayside suburbs of Melbourne, including...
an electorate in
MelbourneMelbourne is the capital city and most populous city of the State of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne city centre is the anchor of the larger geographical area and statistical division known as the Greater Melbourne metropolitan area – of which Melbourne is...
was named after her. Seats in her honour have been established in
Parliament House Gardens, Melbourne and in
Portland, Victoria.
The Women's Electoral Lobby in Victoria has named an award after her. 2008 was the centenary of woman suffrage in Victoria and Vida's contribution was
remembered.
External links