Author: Jennifer Caligari
Deakin University

Edition: Volume 64, Number 2, July 2024

Introduction: In the late nineteenth century, adult and public learning pedagogy were the key instruments utilised in the campaign to achieve Victorian Women’s Suffrage. The democratic process of changing state government legislation on franchise demanded multiple pedagogical methods. Through the actions of Bessie Harrison Lee (1860-1950), this paper identifies the reaching out to urban and rural women by the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), where they engaged in a transformative exercise in consciousness-raising. This helped women visualise the possibilities of improving their lives through the democratic process. The WCTU taught Lee the value of female-centred political action. The WCTU and Lee’s involvement successfully influenced the suffrage debate and contributed to the emerging international women’s culture (McLean & Baroud, 2020, p. 506). Part of this culture featured Australian women adopting the petition as a political instrument. The petition had already had a long history in Britain, used by groups with little political influence. Ian Fletcher’s conception of the British Empire as “a set of relations, rather than the sum of their parts, as frameworks structuring political, economic and cultural exchanges between metropole and colonies” is useful in understanding how political ideas travelled to and were adapted in the Australian context.

Keywords: Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, adult learning pedagogy, public pedagogy, Monster Petition, evangelicalism, social movements, Bourdieu

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This article is part of AJAL, Volume 64:2. The entire volume is available in .pdf for purchase here.