Episode 3 of 3

First Female Political Candidate

When: 1897
Where: Adelaide
Part of: South Australian women gain the vote and the right to stand for Parliament

Catherine Helen Spence became the first female political candidate in Australia in 1897, standing unsuccessfully for the Federal Convention.

Spence stood as a delegate to the Federal Convention on Australian Federation, held in Adelaide. This was the first instance of a woman being a candidate for political office in Australia, following the legislative changes that allowed women to stand for election.

Sources

Women's suffrage in Australia Wikipedia, revision of 2026-06-14
South Australia Wikipedia, revision of 2026-10-04

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.