1 dollar 2003 - Women's Suffrage
By CAA | Sunday, 14 April 2024
In December 2003, Australia celebrated the centenary of most women's first opportunity to exercise their right to vote and stand in federal elections with the release of a $1 coin commemorating women's suffrage.
The design for the $1 coin is based on a representation of the Dora Meeson suffrage banner Commonwealth of Australia: Trust the Women Mother As I Have Done, which is on display in Parliament House. The Banner was carried at the head of the Australian and New Zealand contingent of women suffragists in the Women's Suffrage Coronation Procession in London in 1911 and is widely recognized as a celebration of women's suffrage in Australia.
Dora Meeson (1869–1955) was an Australian artist, suffragist, and an elected member of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters in London, England. In January 1907, the Artists' Suffrage League was established with Meeson an early member, making significant artistic contributions through her production of political posters, banners and postcards from the league's studio in The King's Road.
In May 1911 Vida Goldstein encouraged Meeson and others to form the Australian and New Zealand Women Voters' Committee (London), for the purpose of applying political pressure for voting rights and women's rights.
On 17 June 1911 at 5:30pm the Women's Suffrage Coronation Procession was held in London. Vida Goldstein, Margaret Fisher, and Emily McGowen led the Australian contingent with Meeson's banner carried by her and supported by her husband at the front of the Australian and New Zealand contingent. The banner was purchased from the Women's Library by the National Women's Consultative Council as a Bicentennial Gift to the Women of Australia in 1988.
In 1988, the Australian federal government purchased Anglo-Australian artist Dora Meeson Coates's "Trust the Women" banner as part of the country's belated efforts to memorialize the suffrage victories that once made its White citizens the most enfranchised people on earth. However, between the fin de siècle and the 1970s, which witnessed the concurrent rise of women's history and state feminism, feminists had been ambivalent about commemorating the suffrage campaigns, especially at the national level. Since the late 1980s, the banner has experienced a transformation from an artefact few Australians had known about, much less forgotten, into the most familiar symbol of the country's suffrage movements. Brought about by memory agents activists, bureaucrats, historians, and politicians-this shift reveals the public appeal of British suffrage iconography over the material record of Australian activists' "quiet" toil, a sentiment which has increasingly shaped the memorialization of local suffrage stories.
- James Keating
Million of the $1 suffrage coins were minted in December 2003 and they were available in general circulation early 2004. The suffrage coin was not directly available from the Royal Australian Mint.
1 dollar 2003 - Price Guide and Values
