Women's league and Ellinor Walker lobby and get passed 1940 act for equal child custody rights for mothers
Ellinor Walker of the Women's League of Voters drafted the near perfect parliamentary bill that gave mothers equal rights in children's custody.
Ellinor Walker image courtesy State Library of South Australia
A prime example of women's effective political obbying was the 1940 Guardianship of Infants Act that was both proposed and drafted by the League of Women Voters.
The league’s former identity, the Women's Political (Non-Party) Association, since its start in 1909, had concerns over child guardianship and custody. Old common law gave supremacy to a husband over his wife and his children. The association's members believed strongly that the mother should have equal powers with the father over custody of children.
In 1924, justice of the peace Agnes Goode, gave the example of a woman who obtained a legal separation from her second husband but, by law, had to hand over her own children to the husband, the children’s stepfather, unless a court order gave her their guardianship. But if that woman died, the stepfather, guardian of the children, would not be made to maintain them.
In 1932, a women’s non-party association subcommittee. including long-standing member Ellinor Walker, worked on new legislation. It wrote to counterparts in England and other countries to examined their legislation.
Walker, a teacher with her own Montessori school, took up the task of drafting a South Australian bill. Her draft was approved by lawyer Roma Mitchell.
Backed by many women's organisations, the-now Women’s League of Voters took its draft bill in 1940 to attorney general Shirley Jeffries. He was sympathetic and the bill went through parliament with only one minor procedural alteration. The Guardianship of Infants Act had an unprecedented Clause 4 that gave equal custody rights, authority and responsibility to mothers.
In 1957, the league, backed by other organisations, lobbied to have the South Australian marriage age raised above 14 for boys and 12 for girls. Again, Walker was at the forefront of this campaign. Despite government support, the first bill failed but the second succeeded, with the ages raised to 18 for boys and 16 for girls.
