The South Australian women’s suffrage campaign
Following its colonisation in 1836, South Australian settlers lived under British common law which made women subordinate to men in that they were subject to their fathers, and then to their husbands. Their property, income and children were the legal property of their husbands. As the nineteenth century rolled on however, certain progressive legislative changes began to occur that separated women’s legal identity from this archaic system, such as the 1858 Matrimonial Causes Act that allowed divorce, and the Municipal Corporations Act of 1861 that allowed owner/occupiers of property (including women) to vote in local government elections.