A new exhibition at the National Library of Australia celebrates the 100th anniversary of women getting the vote in Great Britain but also makes us reflect on the current mood of the feminist movement.
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Deeds Not Words: Women's Suffrage in Britain features pieces from the personal collection of Bessie Rischbieth, one of Australia's earliest and most influential feminists.
The opening marks 100 years since British parliament passed reforms that gave 8.4 million women the vote.
Inspired by the suffragette movement she witnessed first hand while travelling in Britain in 1913, Rischbieth built a collection of photographs, pamphlets, newspaper cutting, suffrage periodicals, postcards and correspondence, as well personal items such as badges, medals, that captured something of the time.
Rischbieth bequeathed her collection to the NLA at the time of her death in 1967. It is one of the library's larger collections with 37 archive boxes taking up 7.6 metres of shelving space. This is the first time selected items have been brought together for exhibition.
Curator Beatrice Bijon, a scholar of English literature and women's history and a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University, said she wanted to convey something of Rischbieth's vision.
"She was in London in 1913 travelling with her husband and she was caught up by the whole spectacle of the suffragette movement," Bijon says.
"That urge to fight for reform was already in her, you can read it in her letters, and this was a fight that was inspirational, the energy she saw there gave her focus."
Indeed in one of her personal letters to her sister Rischbieth wrote, after hearing Emily Pankhurst, one of the leaders of the suffragette movement, "as I listened, I felt my backbone growing longer, as though you gained courage and freedom from her".
Upon her return from London, Rischbieth fought for women's, children's and indigenous rights and was the first woman appointed a Justice of the Peace in Western Australia. She also lobbied for women's representation in, and was appointed to the Australian delegation to the League of Nations, which later was replaced by the United Nations, in 1935, the same year she received an OBE.
Bijon says the exhibition makes us think about how far we have come but how much more there is still left to do, showing in the middle of the #metoo movement and "what is happening around harassment and bullying.
"Western women have a lot to celebrate but there is still a lot to be angry about," she says.
"Bessie wanted her collection to be seen and I feel as though it's come full circle and there couldn't be a more fitting time for it to be seen by the public."
Deeds Not Words: Women's Suffrage in Britain is at the National Library of Australia until August 19.
