Accommodating Women: Geographies of Citizenship in the Twentieth‐Century Campaign for Women's Jury Rights

2026/07/27 by Alecia Simmonds
Social Sciences · #Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis #Jury Decision Making Processes #Law in Society and Culture

paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/1468-0424.70037

openalex publication_date 2026/07/27 · openalex created_date 2026/07/28 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29

Abstract

ABSTRACT Australian women were among the first in the world to receive electoral suffrage, yet it took until 1997 before they had full equality of jury suffrage. This article examines the debate around female jurors by focusing less on discourses of citizenship than on the subterranean spatial arrangements upon which equality depended. From concerns about jurors being locked up overnight, or “ladies” being forced into a jury box with “undesirables,” to the refusal of governments to build women's amenities, the jury debate raised questions around gendered geographies of citizenship. How were women to find a place in courtrooms built for men?

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