Barbara Steel OBE; 1857 – 22 December 1943) was a Scottish social activist who actively campaigned for Women's Suffrage in both the United Kingdom and South Africa.

[1][2][3] Her father was a United Presbyterian minister and her oldest brother James Alexander later became a professor of Hebrew and Old Testament Exegesis at New College, Edinburgh.

Many of these apartments, located throughout the city in neighborhoods like Comely Bank, Dalry, Gorgie, Haymarket, Murieston Park, and Tollcross, had fixed rents.

She also served on the Local Government and Women's Franchise committees of the SWLF[9] and was a member of the Edinburgh National Society of Woman Suffrage.

[10] Lady Steel made international headlines from England to Australia and the United States in March 1907, when she refused to pay taxes without being allowed to vote.

[13][14] On the eve of the election, a poem "The Suffragette's Nut Cracked" showing the conflict over votes for women and Steel's candidacy was published in the Edinburgh Evening Dispatch.

[18] In March 1911, Lady Steel married Lt. Col. James Hyslop, D.S.O., and moved with him to his home in Pietermaritzburg, in the newly formed Union of South Africa.

[21][22] Hyslop was a fellow Scotsman from Kirkcudbrightshire, who had moved to the Colony of Natal in 1881 and worked there as a pioneer in mental health and as a military physician.

On her advice, the WEAU decided to ignore the issue of universal suffrage for all races, actively working only for the vote of white women.