Vida Goldstein

Australia's 1902 franchise act gave most white women both the federal vote and the right to stand, a combination almost nowhere else had. Goldstein used the second half at once: in 1903 she ran for the Senate in Victoria, one of the first women anywhere to stand for a national parliament, and won more than 51,000 votes without winning a seat. She stood four more times without success. Her campaigns, run through the Women's Political Association she founded, show the gap between eligibility and election: no woman entered the federal parliament until 1943.