Women's suffrage (colloquial: female suffrage,
woman suffrage, or women's right to vote)
is the right of women to vote in elections;
a person who advocates the extension of suffrage,
particularly to women, is called a suffragist.
Limited voting rights were gained by women
in Finland, Iceland, Sweden and some Australian
colonies and western U.S. states in the late
19th century. National and international organizations
formed to coordinate efforts to gain voting
rights, especially the International Woman
Suffrage Alliance (founded in 1904, Berlin,
Germany), and also worked for equal civil
rights for women.In 1881, the Isle of Man
gave women who owned property the right to
vote. In 1893, the British colony of New Zealand
granted women the right to vote. The colony
of South Australia did the same in 1894 and
all women were able to vote in the next election,
which was held in 1896. South Australia also
permitted women of any race to stand for election
alongside men, and was the first in the world
to allow women to stand for election. In 1899
Western Australia enacted full women's suffrage,
enabling women to vote in the constitutional
referendum of 31 July 1900 and the 1901 state
and federal elections. In 1902 women in the
remaining four colonies also acquired the
right to vote and stand in federal elections
after the six Australian colonies federated
to become the Commonwealth of Australia. Discriminatory
restrictions against Aboriginal people, including
women, voting in national elections, were
not completely removed until 1962.The first
European country to introduce women's suffrage
was the Grand Duchy of Finland, then part
of the Russian Empire, which elected the world's
first women Members of Parliament in the 1907
parliamentary elections. Norway followed,
granting full women's suffrage in 1913. Denmark
followed in 1915, and Russian Provisional
Government in 1917.Most independent countries
enacted women's suffrage in the interwar era,
including Canada in 1917, Britain (over 30
in 1918, over 21 in 1928), Germany, Poland
in 1918, Austria and the Netherlands in 1919,
and the United States in 1920 (Voting Rights
Act of 1965 secured voting rights for racial
minorities).
Leslie Hume argues that the First World War
changed the popular mood:
The women's contribution to the war effort
challenged the notion of women's physical
and mental inferiority and made it more difficult
to maintain that women were, both by constitution
and temperament, unfit to vote. If women could
work in munitions factories, it seemed both
ungrateful and illogical to deny them a place
in the polling booth. But the vote was much
more than simply a reward for war work; the
point was that women's participation in the
war helped to dispel the fears that surrounded
women's entry into the public arena.Late adopters
in Europe were Spain in 1933, France in 1944,
Italy in 1946, Greece in 1952, San Marino
in 1959, Monaco in 1962, Andorra in 1970,
Switzerland in 1971 at federal level, and
at local canton level between 1959 in the
cantons of Vaud and Neuchâtel and 1991 in
the canton of Appenzell Innerrhoden, and Liechtenstein
in 1984. In addition, although women in Portugal
obtained suffrage in 1931, this was with stronger
restrictions than those of men; full gender
equality in voting was only granted in 1976.The
United States gave women equal voting rights
in all states with the Nineteenth Amendment
ratified in 1920. Brazil implemented full
voting rights for women in 1932. Canada and
some Latin American nations passed women's
suffrage before World War II while the vast
majority of Latin American nations established
women's suffrage in the 1940s, with the exception
of Uruguay in 1917 (see table in Summary below).
The last Latin American country to give women
the right to vote was Paraguay in 1961. In
December 2015, women were first allowed to
vote in Saudi Arabia (municipal elections).Extended
political campaigns by women and their supporters
have generally been necessary to gain legislation
or constitutional amendments for women's suffrage.
In many countries, limited suffrage for women
was granted before universal suffrage for
men; for instance, literate women or property
owners were granted suffrage before all men
received it. The United Nations encouraged
women's suffrage in the years following World
War II, and the Convention on the Elimination
of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women
(1979) identifies it as a basic right with
189 countries currently being parties to this
Convention.
== History ==
In ancient Athens, often cited as the birthplace
of democracy, only adult, male citizens who
owned land were permitted to vote. Through
subsequent centuries, Europe was generally
ruled by monarchs, though various forms of
parliament arose at different times. The high
rank ascribed to abbesses within the Catholic
Church permitted some women the right to sit
and vote at national assemblies – as with
various high-ranking abbesses in Medieval
Germany, who were ranked among the independent
princes of the empire. Their Protestant successors
enjoyed the same privilege almost into modern
times.Marie Guyart, a French nun who worked
with the First Nations peoples of Canada during
the seventeenth century, wrote in 1654 regarding
the suffrage practices of Iroquois women,
"These female chieftains are women of standing
amongst the savages, and they have a deciding
vote in the councils. They make decisions
there like the men, and it is they who even
delegated the first ambassadors to discuss
peace." The Iroquois, like many First Nations
peoples in North America, had a matrilineal
kinship system. Property and descent were
passed through the female line. Women elders
voted on hereditary male chiefs and could
depose them.
The emergence of modern democracy generally
began with male citizens obtaining the right
to vote in advance of female citizens, except
in the Kingdom of Hawai'i, where universal
manhood and women's suffrage was introduced
in 1840; however, a constitutional amendment
in 1852 rescinded female voting and put property
qualifications on male voting.
In Sweden, conditional women's suffrage was
in effect during the Age of Liberty (1718–1772).
Other possible contenders for first "country"
to grant women suffrage include the Corsican
Republic (1755), the Pitcairn Islands (1838),
the Isle of Man (1881), and Franceville (1889–1890),
but some of these operated only briefly as
independent states and others were not clearly
independent.
In 1756, Lydia Taft became the first legal
woman voter in colonial America. This occurred
under British rule in the Massachusetts Colony.
In a New England town meeting in Uxbridge,
Massachusetts, she voted on at least three
occasions. Unmarried white women who owned
property could vote in New Jersey from 1776
to 1807.
In the 1792 elections in Sierra Leone, then
a new British colony, all heads of household
could vote and one-third were ethnic African
women.The female descendants of the Bounty
mutineers who lived on Pitcairn Islands could
vote from 1838. This right was transferred
after they resettled in 1856 to Norfolk Island
(now an Australian external territory).The
seed for the first Woman's Rights Convention
in the United States in Seneca Falls, New
York was planted in 1840, when Elizabeth Cady
Stanton met Lucretia Mott at the World Anti-Slavery
Convention in London. The conference refused
to seat Mott and other women delegates from
the U.S. because of their sex. In 1851, Stanton
met temperance worker Susan B. Anthony, and
shortly the two would be joined in the long
struggle to secure the vote for women in the
U.S. In 1868 Anthony encouraged working women
from the printing and sewing trades in New
York, who were excluded from men's trade unions,
to form Working Women's Associations. As a
delegate to the National Labor Congress in
1868, Anthony persuaded the committee on female
labor to call for votes for women and equal
pay for equal work. The men at the conference
deleted the reference to the vote. In the
U.S. women in the Wyoming Territory could
vote as of 1869. Subsequent American suffrage
groups often disagreed on tactics, with the
National American Woman Suffrage Association
arguing for a state-by-state campaign and
the National Woman's Party focusing on an
amendment to the U.S. Constitution.In 1881
the Isle of Man, an internally self-governing
dependent territory of the British Crown,
enfranchised women property owners. With this
it provided the first action for women's suffrage
within the British Isles.The Pacific commune
of Franceville (now Port Vila, Vanuatu), maintained
independence from 1889 to 1890, becoming the
first self-governing nation to adopt universal
suffrage without distinction of sex or color,
although only white males were permitted to
hold office.Of currently existing independent
countries, New Zealand was the first to acknowledge
women's right to vote in 1893 when it was
a self-governing British colony. Unrestricted
women's suffrage in terms of voting rights
(women were not initially permitted to stand
for election) was adopted in New Zealand in
1893. Following a successful movement led
by Kate Sheppard, the women's suffrage bill
was adopted weeks before the general election
of that year. The women of the British protectorate
of Cook Islands obtained the same right soon
after and beat New Zealand's women to the
polls in 1893.The self-governing British colony
of South Australia enacted universal suffrage
in 1895, also allowing women to stand for
the colonial parliament that year. The Commonwealth
of Australia federated in 1901, with women
voting and standing for office in some states.
The Australian Federal Parliament extended
voting rights to all adult women for Federal
elections from 1902 (with the exception of
Aboriginal women in some states).The first
European country to introduce women's suffrage
was the Grand Duchy of Finland in 1906. It
was among reforms passed following the 1905
uprising. As a result of the 1907 parliamentary
elections, Finland's voters elected 19 women
as the first female members of a representative
parliament; they took their seats later that
year.
In the years before World War I, women in
Norway (1913) also won the right to vote,
as did women in the remaining Australian states.
Denmark granted women's suffrage in 1915.
Near the end of the war, Canada, Russia, Germany,
and Poland also recognized women's right to
vote. The Representation of the People Act
1918 saw British women over 30 gain the vote,
Dutch women in 1919, and American women won
the vote on 26 August 1920 with the passage
of the 19th Amendment (the Voting Rights Act
of 1965 secured voting rights for racial minorities).
Irish women won the same voting rights as
men in the Irish Free State constitution,
1922. In 1928, British women won suffrage
on the same terms as men, that is, for persons
21 years old and older. Suffrage of Turkish
women introduced in 1930 for local elections
and in 1934 for national elections.
By the time French women were granted the
suffrage in July 1944 by Charles de Gaulle's
government in exile, by a vote of 51 for,
16 against, France had been for about a decade
the only Western country that did not at least
allow women's suffrage at municipal elections.Voting
rights for women were introduced into international
law by the United Nations' Human Rights Commission,
whose elected chair was Eleanor Roosevelt.
In 1948 the United Nations adopted the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights; Article 21 stated:
"(1) Everyone has the right to take part in
the government of his country, directly or
through freely chosen representatives. (3)
The will of the people shall be the basis
of the authority of government; this will
shall be expressed in periodic and genuine
elections which shall be by universal and
equal suffrage and shall be held by secret
vote or by equivalent free voting procedures."
The United Nations General Assembly adopted
the Convention on the Political Rights of
Women, which went into force in 1954, enshrining
the equal rights of women to vote, hold office,
and access public services as set out by national
laws. One of the most recent jurisdictions
to acknowledge women's full right to vote
was Bhutan in 2008 (its first national elections).
== Suffrage movements ==
The suffrage movement was a broad one, encompassing
women and men with a wide range of views.
In terms of diversity, the greatest achievement
of the twentieth-century woman suffrage movement
was its extremely broad class base. One major
division, especially in Britain, was between
suffragists, who sought to create change constitutionally,
and suffragettes, led by English political
activist Emmeline Pankhurst, who in 1903 formed
the more militant Women's Social and Political
Union. Pankhurst would not be satisfied with
anything but action on the question of women's
enfranchisement, with "deeds, not words" the
organisation's motto.Throughout the world,
the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU),
which was established in the United States
in 1873, campaigned for women's suffrage,
in addition to ameliorating the condition
of prostitutes. Under the leadership of Frances
Willard, "the WCTU became the largest women's
organization of its day and is now the oldest
continuing women's organization in the United
States."There was also a diversity of views
on a "woman's place". Suffragist themes often
included the notions that women were naturally
kinder and more concerned about children and
the elderly. As Kraditor shows, it was often
assumed that women voters would have a civilizing
effect on politics, opposing domestic violence,
liquor, and emphasizing cleanliness and community.
An opposing theme, Kraditor argues, held that
women had the same moral standards. They should
be equal in every way and that there was no
such thing as a woman's "natural role".For
black women, achieving suffrage was a way
to counter the disfranchisement of the men
of their race. Despite this discouragement,
black suffragists continued to insist on their
equal political rights. Starting in the 1890s,
African American women began to assert their
political rights aggressively from within
their own clubs and suffrage societies. "If
white American women, with all their natural
and acquired advantages, need the ballot,"
argued Adella Hunt Logan of Tuskegee, Alabama,
"how much more do black Americans, male and
female, need the strong defense of a vote
to help secure their right to life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness?"
== Timeline ==
== By continent ==
=== Africa ===
==== Sierra Leone ====
One of the first occasions when women were
able to vote was in the elections of the Nova
Scotian settlers at Freetown. In the 1792
elections, all heads of household could vote
and one-third were ethnic African women.
Women won the right to vote in Sierra Leone
in 1930.
==== South Africa ====
The franchise was extended to white women
21 years or older by the Women's Enfranchisement
Act, 1930. The first general election at which
women could vote was the 1933 election. At
that election Leila Reitz (wife of Deneys
Reitz) was elected as the first female MP,
representing Parktown for the South African
Party. The limited voting rights available
to non-white men in the Cape Province and
Natal (Transvaal and the Orange Free State
practically denied all non-whites the right
to vote, and had also done so to non-Afrikaner
uitlanders when independent in the 1800s)
were not extended to women, and were themselves
progressively eliminated between 1936 and
1968.
The right to vote for the Transkei Legislative
Assembly, established in 1963 for the Transkei
bantustan, was granted to all adult citizens
of the Transkei, including women. Similar
provision was made for the Legislative Assemblies
created for other bantustans. All adult coloured
citizens were eligible to vote for the Coloured
Persons Representative Council, which was
established in 1968 with limited legislative
powers; the council was however abolished
in 1980. Similarly, all adult Indian citizens
were eligible to vote for the South African
Indian Council in 1981. In 1984 the Tricameral
Parliament was established, and the right
to vote for the House of Representatives and
House of Delegates was granted to all adult
Coloured and Indian citizens, respectively.
In 1994 the bantustans and the Tricameral
Parliament were abolished and the right to
vote for the National Assembly was granted
to all adult citizens.
==== Southern Rhodesia ====
Southern Rhodesian white women won the vote
in 1919 and Ethel Tawse Jollie (1875–1950)
was elected to the Southern Rhodesia legislature
1920–1928, the first woman to sit in any
national Commonwealth Parliament outside Westminster.
The influx of women settlers from Britain
proved a decisive factor in the 1922 referendum
that rejected annexation by a South Africa
increasingly under the sway of traditionalist
Afrikaner Nationalists in favor of Rhodesian
Home Rule or "responsible government". Black
Rhodesian males qualified for the vote in
1923 (based only upon property, assets, income,
and literacy). It is unclear when the first
black woman qualified for the vote.
=== Asia ===
==== Afghanistan ====
Women have been able to vote in Afghanistan
since 1965 (except during Taliban rule, 1996–2001,
when no elections were held). As of 2009,
women have been casting fewer ballots in part
due to being unaware of their voting rights.
In the 2014 election, Afghanistan's elected
president pledged to bring women equal rights.
==== Bangladesh ====
Bangladesh was (mostly) the province of Bengal
in India until 1947, then it became part of
Pakistan. It became an independent nation
in 1971. Women have had equal suffrage since
1947, and they have reserved seats in parliament.
Bangladesh is notable in that since 1991,
two women, namely Sheikh Hasina and Begum
Khaleda Zia, have served terms as the country's
Prime Minister continuously. Women have traditionally
played a minimal role in politics beyond the
anomaly of the two leaders; few used to run
against men; few have been ministers. Recently,
however, women have become more active in
politics, with several prominent ministerial
posts given to women and women participating
in national, district and municipal elections
against men and winning on several occasions.
Choudhury and Hasanuzzaman argue that the
strong patriarchal traditions of Bangladesh
explain why women are so reluctant to stand
up in politics.
==== India ====
Women in India were allowed to vote right
from the first general elections after the
independence of India in 1947 unlike during
the British rule who resisted allowing women
to vote. The Women's Indian Association (WIA)
was founded in 1917. It sought votes for women
and the right to hold legislative office on
the same basis as men. These positions were
endorsed by the main political groupings,
the Indian National Congress. British and
Indian feminists combined in 1918 to publish
a magazine Stri Dharma that featured international
news from a feminist perspective. In 1919
in the Montagu–Chelmsford Reforms, the British
set up provincial legislatures which had the
power to grant women's suffrage. Madras in
1921 granted votes to wealthy and educated
women, under the same terms that applied to
men. The other provinces followed, but not
the princely states (which did not have votes
for men either, being monarchies). In Bengal
province, the provincial assembly rejected
it in 1921 but Southard shows an intense campaign
produced victory in 1921. Success in Bengal
depended on middle class Indian women, who
emerged from a fast-growing urban elite. The
women leaders in Bengal linked their crusade
to a moderate nationalist agenda, by showing
how they could participate more fully in nation-building
by having voting power. They carefully avoided
attacking traditional gender roles by arguing
that traditions could coexist with political
modernization.Whereas wealthy and educated
women in Madras were granted voting right
in 1921, in Punjab the Sikhs granted women
equal voting rights in 1925 irrespective of
their educational qualifications or being
wealthy or poor. This happened when the Gurdwara
Act of 1925 was approved. The original draft
of the Gurdwara Act sent by the British to
the Sharomani Gurdwara Prabhandak Committee
(SGPC) did not include Sikh women, but the
Sikhs inserted the clause without the women
having to ask for it. Equality of women with
men is enshrined in the Guru Granth Sahib,
the sacred scripture of the Sikh faith.
In the Government of India Act 1935 the British
Raj set up a system of separate electorates
and separate seats for women. Most women's
leaders opposed segregated electorates and
demanded adult franchise. In 1931 the Congress
promised universal adult franchise when it
came to power. It enacted equal voting rights
for both men and women in 1947.
==== Indonesia ====
In the first half of the 20th century, Indonesia
(known until 1945 as Dutch East Indies) was
one of the slowest moving countries to gain
women's suffrage. They began their fight in
1905 by introducing municipal councils that
included some members elected by a restricted
district. Voting rights only went to males
that could read and write, which excluded
many non-European males. At the time, the
literacy rate for males was 11% and for females
2%. The main group who pressured the Indonesian
government for women's suffrage was the Dutch
Vereeninging voor Vrouwenkiesrecht (VVV-Women's
Suffrage Association) which was founded in
the Netherlands in 1894. They tried to attract
Indonesian membership, but had very limited
success because the leaders of the organization
had little skill in relating to even the educated
class of the Indonesians. When they eventually
did connect somewhat with women, they failed
to sympathize with them and thus ended up
alienating many well-educated Indonesians.
In 1918 the colony gained its first national
representative body, the Volksraad, which
still excluded women from voting. In 1935,
the colonial administration used its power
of nomination to appoint a European woman
to the Volksraad. In 1938, the administration
introduced the right of women to be elected
to urban representative institutions, which
resulted in some Indonesian and European women
entering municipal councils. Eventually, the
law became that only European women and municipal
councils could vote, which excluded all other
women and local councils. September 1941 was
when this law was amended and the law extended
to women of all races by the Volksraad. Finally,
in November 1941, the right to vote for municipal
councils was granted to all women on a similar
basis to men (with property and educational
qualifications).
==== Iran ====
In 1963, a referendum overwhelmingly approved
by voters gave women the right to vote, a
right previously denied to them under the
Iranian Constitution of 1906 pursuant to Chapter
2, Article 3.
==== Israel ====
Women have full suffrage since the establishment
of the State of Israel in 1948.
==== Japan ====
Although women were allowed to vote in some
prefectures in 1880, women's suffrage was
enacted at a national level in 1945.Korea
South Korean women were granted the vote in
1948.
==== Kuwait ====
When voting was first introduced in Kuwait
in 1985, Kuwaiti women had the right to vote.
The right was later removed. In May 2005,
the Kuwaiti parliament re-granted female suffrage.
==== Lebanon ====
==== Pakistan ====
Pakistan was part of British Raj until 1947,
when it became independent. Women received
full suffrage in 1947. Muslim women leaders
from all classes actively supported the Pakistan
movement in the mid-1940s. Their movement
was led by wives and other relatives of leading
politicians. Women were sometimes organized
into large-scale public demonstrations.
In November 1988, Benazir Bhutto became the
first Muslim woman to be elected as Prime
Minister of a Muslim country.
==== Philippines ====
Suffrage for Filipinas was achieved following
an all-female, special plebiscite held on
30 April 1937. 447,725—some ninety percent—voted
in favour of women's suffrage against 44,307
who voted no. In compliance with the 1935
Constitution, the National Assembly passed
a law which extended the right of suffrage
to women, which remains to this day.
==== Saudi Arabia ====
In late September 2011, King Abdullah bin
Abdulaziz al-Saud declared that women would
be able to vote and run for office starting
in 2015. That applies to the municipal councils,
which are the kingdom's only semi-elected
bodies. Half of the seats on municipal councils
are elective, and the councils have few powers.
The council elections have been held since
2005 (the first time they were held before
that was the 1960s). Saudi women did first
vote and first run for office in December
2015, for those councils. Salma bint Hizab
al-Oteibi became the first elected female
politician in Saudi Arabia in December 2015,
when she won a seat on the council in Madrakah
in Mecca province. In all, the December 2015
election in Saudi Arabia resulted in twenty
women being elected to municipal councils.The
king declared in 2011 that women would be
eligible to be appointed to the Shura Council,
an unelected body that issues advisory opinions
on national policy. '"This is great news,"
said Saudi writer and women's rights activist
Wajeha al-Huwaider. "Women's voices will finally
be heard. Now it is time to remove other barriers
like not allowing women to drive cars and
not being able to function, to live a normal
life without male guardians."' Robert Lacey,
author of two books about the kingdom, said,
"This is the first positive, progressive speech
out of the government since the Arab Spring....
First the warnings, then the payments, now
the beginnings of solid reform." The king
made the announcement in a five-minute speech
to the Shura Council. In January 2013, King
Abdullah issued two royal decrees, granting
women thirty seats on the council, and stating
that women must always hold at least a fifth
of the seats on the council. According to
the decrees, the female council members must
be "committed to Islamic Shariah disciplines
without any violations" and be "restrained
by the religious veil." The decrees also said
that the female council members would be entering
the council building from special gates, sit
in seats reserved for women and pray in special
worshipping places. Earlier, officials said
that a screen would separate genders and an
internal communications network would allow
men and women to communicate. Women first
joined the council in 2013, occupying thirty
seats. There are two Saudi royal women among
these thirty female members of the assembly,
Sara bint Faisal Al Saud and Moudi bint Khalid
Al Saud. Furthermore, in 2013 three women
were named as deputy chairpersons of three
committees: Thurayya Obeid was named deputy
chairwoman of the human rights and petitions
committee, Zainab Abu Talib, deputy chairwoman
of the information and cultural committee,
and Lubna Al Ansari, deputy chairwoman of
the health affairs and environment committee.
==== Sri Lanka ====
Sri Lanka (at that time Ceylon) was one of
the first Asian countries to allow voting
rights to women over the age of 21 without
any restrictions. Since then, women have enjoyed
a significant presence in the Sri Lankan political
arena. The zenith of this favourable condition
to women has been the 1960 July General Elections,
in which Ceylon elected the world's first
woman Prime Minister, Sirimavo Bandaranaike.
She is the world's first democratically elected
female head of government. Her daughter, Chandrika
Kumaratunga also became the Prime Minister
later in 1994, and the same year she was elected
as the Executive President of Sri Lanka, making
her the fourth woman in the world to hold
the portfolio.
=== Europe ===
==== Austria ====
It was only after the breakdown of the Habsburg
Monarchy, that Austria would grant the general,
equal, direct and secret right to vote to
all citizens, regardless of sex, in 1919.
==== Azerbaijan ====
Azerbaijan is known to be the first ever Muslim-majority
country which enfranchised women. Universal
voting rights were recognized in Azerbaijan
in 1918 by the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic.
==== Belgium ====
A revision of the constitution in October
1921 (it changed art. 47 of the Constitution
of Belgium of 1831) introduced the general
right to vote according to the "one man, one
vote" principle. Art. 47 allowed widows of
World War I to vote at the national level
as well.
The introduction of women's suffrage was already
put onto the agenda at the time, by means
of including an article in the constitution
that allowed approval of women's suffrage
by special law (meaning it needed a 2/3 majority
to pass).
This happened in March 1948. In Belgium, voting
is compulsory but not enforced.
==== Bulgaria ====
Bulgaria was liberated from Ottoman rule in
1878. Although the first adopted constitution,
the Tarnovo Constitution (1879), gave women
equal election rights, in fact women were
not allowed to vote and to be elected. The
Bulgarian Women's Union was an umbrella organization
of the 27 local women's organisations that
had been established in Bulgaria since 1878.
It was founded as a reply to the limitations
of women's education and access to university
studies in the 1890s, with the goal to further
women's intellectual development and participation,
arranged national congresses and used Zhenski
glas as its organ. However, they have limited
success, and women were allowed to vote and
to be elected only after when Communist rule
was established.
==== Croatia ====
==== Czech Republic ====
In the former Bohemia, taxpaying women and
women in "learned profession[s]" were allowed
to vote by proxy and made eligible to the
legislative body in 1864. The first Czech
female MP was elected to the Diet of Bohemia
in 1912. Women were guaranteed equal voting
rights by The constitution of the Czechoslovak
Republic in 1920.
==== Denmark ====
In Denmark, the Danish Women's Society (DK)
debated, and informally supported, women's
suffrage from 1884, but it did not support
it publicly until in 1887, when it supported
the suggestion of the parliamentarian Fredrik
Bajer to grant women municipal suffrage. In
1886, in response to the perceived overcautious
attitude of DK in the question of women suffrage,
Matilde Bajer founded the Kvindelig Fremskridtsforening
(or KF, 1886–1904) to deal exclusively with
the right to suffrage, both in municipal and
national elections, and it 1887, the Danish
women publicly demanded the right for women's
suffrage for the first time through the KF.
However, as the KF was very much involved
with worker's rights and pacifist activity,
the question of women's suffrage was in fact
not given full attention, which led to the
establishment of the strictly women's suffrage
movement Kvindevalgretsforeningen (1889–1897).
In 1890, the KF and the Kvindevalgretsforeningen
united with five women's trade worker's unions
to found the De samlede Kvindeforeninger,
and through this form, an active women's suffrage
campaign was arranged through agitation and
demonstration. However, after having been
met by compact resistance, the Danish suffrage
movement almost discontinued with the dissolution
of the De samlede Kvindeforeninger in 1893.In
1898, an umbrella organization, the Danske
Kvindeforeningers Valgretsforbund or DKV was
founded and became a part of the International
Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA). In 1907, the
Landsforbundet for Kvinders Valgret (LKV)
was founded by Elna Munch, Johanne Rambusch
and Marie Hjelmer in reply to what they considered
to be the much too careful attitude of the
Danish Women's Society. The LKV originated
from a local suffrage association in Copenhagen,
and like its rival DKV, it successfully organized
other such local associations nationally.Women
won the right to vote in municipal elections
on April 20, 1908. However it was not until
June 5, 1915 that they were allowed to vote
in Rigsdag elections.
==== Estonia ====
Estonia gained its independence in 1918 with
the Estonian War of Independence. However,
the first official elections were held in
1917. These were the elections of temporary
council (i.e. Maapäev), which ruled Estonia
from 1917–1919. Since then, women have had
the right to vote.
The parliament elections were held in 1920.
After the elections, two women got into the
parliament – history teacher Emma Asson
and journalist Alma Ostra-Oinas. Estonian
parliament is called Riigikogu and during
the First Republic of Estonia it used to have
100 seats.
==== Finland ====
The area that in 1809 became Finland was a
group of integral provinces of the Kingdom
of Sweden for over 600 years. Thus, women
in Finland were allowed to vote during the
Swedish Age of Liberty (1718–1772), during
which suffrage was granted to tax-paying female
members of guilds.The predecessor state of
modern Finland, the Grand Duchy of Finland,
was part of the Russian Empire from 1809 to
1917 and enjoyed a high degree of autonomy.
In 1863, taxpaying women were granted municipal
suffrage in the country side, and in 1872,
the same reform was given to the cities. In
1906, it became the first country in the world
to implement full universal suffrage, as women
could also stand as candidates. It also elected
the world's first female members of parliament
the following year.
==== France ====
The 21 April 1944 ordinance of the French
Committee of National Liberation, confirmed
in October 1944 by the French provisional
government, extended the suffrage to French
women. The first elections with female participation
were the municipal elections of 29 April 1945
and the parliamentary elections of 21 October
1945. "Indigenous Muslim" women in French
Algeria also known as Colonial Algeria, had
to wait until a 3 July 1958 decree.
==== Georgia ====
Upon its declaration of independence on 26
May 1918, in the aftermath of the Russian
Revolution, the Democratic Republic of Georgia
extended suffrage to its female citizens.
The women of Georgia first exercised their
right to vote in the 1919 legislative election.
==== Germany ====
Women were granted the right to vote and be
elected from the 12th November 1918.
==== Greece ====
In Greece, women over 18 voted for the first
time in April 1944 for the National Council,
a legislative body set up by the National
Liberation Front resistance movement. Ultimately,
women won the legal right to vote and run
for office on May 28, 1952. The first woman
MP was Eleni Skoura, who was elected in 1953.
==== Hungary ====
In Hungary, although it was already planned
in 1818, the first occasion when women could
vote was the elections held in January 1920.
==== Isle of Man ====
In 1881, The Isle of Man (in the British Isles
but not part of the United Kingdom) passed
a law giving the vote to single and widowed
women who passed a property qualification.
This was to vote in elections for the House
of Keys, in the Island's parliament, Tynwald.
This was extended to universal suffrage for
men and women in 1919.
==== Italy ====
In Italy, women's suffrage was not introduced
following World War I, but upheld by Socialist
and Fascist activists and partly introduced
by Benito Mussolini's government in 1925.
In April 1945, the provisional government
decreed the enfranchisement of women allowing
for the immediate appointment of women to
public office, of which the first was Elena
Fischli Dreher. In the 1946 election, all
Italians simultaneously voted for the Constituent
Assembly and for a referendum about keeping
Italy a monarchy or creating a republic instead.
Elections were not held in the Julian March
and South Tyrol because they were under UN
occupation.
The new version of article 51 Constitution
recognizes equal opportunities in electoral
lists.
==== Liechtenstein ====
In Liechtenstein, women's suffrage was granted
via referendum in 1984.
==== Netherlands ====
Women were granted the right to vote in the
Netherlands on August 9, 1919. In 1917, a
constitutional reform already allowed women
to be electable. However, even though women's
right to vote was approved in 1919, this only
took effect from January 1, 1920. The women's
suffrage movement in the Netherlands was led
by three women: Aletta Jacobs, Wilhelmina
Drucker and Annette Versluys-Poelman. In 1889,
Wilhelmina Drucker founded a women's movement
called Vrije Vrouwen Vereeniging (Free Women’s
Union) and it was from this movement that
the campaign for women's suffrage in the Netherlands
emerged. This movement got a lot of support
from other countries, especially from the
women's suffrage movement in England. In 1906
the movement wrote an open letter to the Queen
pleading for women's suffrage. When this letter
was rejected, in spite of popular support,
the movement organised several demonstrations
and protests in favor of women's suffrage.
This movement was of great significance for
women's suffrage in the Netherlands.
==== Norway ====
Liberal politician Gina Krog was the leading
campaigner for women's suffrage in Norway
from the 1880s. She founded the Norwegian
Association for Women's Rights and the National
Association for Women's Suffrage to promote
this cause. Members of these organisations
were politically well-connected and well organised
and in a few years gradually succeeded in
obtaining equal rights for women. Middle class
women won the right to vote in municipal elections
in 1901 and parliamentary elections in 1907.
Universal suffrage for women in municipal
elections was introduced in 1910, and in 1913
a motion on universal suffrage for women was
adopted unanimously by the Norwegian parliament
(Stortinget). Norway thus became the first
independent country to introduce women's suffrage.
==== Poland ====
Regaining independence in 1918 following the
123-year period of partition and foreign rule,
Poland immediately granted women the right
to vote and be elected as of 28 November 1918.The
first women elected to the Sejm in 1919 were:
Gabriela Balicka, Jadwiga Dziubińska, Irena
Kosmowska, Maria Moczydłowska, Zofia Moraczewska,
Anna Piasecka, Zofia Sokolnicka, and Franciszka
Wilczkowiakowa.
==== Portugal ====
Carolina Beatriz Ângelo was the first Portuguese
woman to vote, in the Constituent National
Assembly election of 1911, taking advantage
of a loophole in the country's electoral law.
In 1931 during the Estado Novo regime, women
were allowed to vote for the first time, but
only if they had a high school or university
degree, while men had only to be able to read
and write. In 1946 a new electoral law enlarged
the possibility of female vote, but still
with some differences regarding men. A law
from 1968 claimed to establish "equality of
political rights for men and women", but a
few electoral rights were reserved for men.
After the Carnation Revolution, women were
granted full and equal electoral rights in
1976.
==== Romania ====
The timeline of granting women's suffrage
in Romania was gradual and complex, due to
the turbulent historical period when it happened.
The concept of universal suffrage for all
men was introduced in 1918, and reinforced
by the 1923 Constitution of Romania. Although
this constitution opened the way for the possibility
of women's suffrage too (Article 6), this
did not materialize: the Electoral Law of
1926 did not grant women the right to vote,
maintaining all male suffrage. Starting in
1929, women who met certain qualifications
were allowed to vote in local elections. After
the Constitution from 1938 (elaborated under
Carol II of Romania who sought to implement
an authoritarian regime) the voting rights
were extended to women for national elections
by the Electoral Law 1939, but both women
and men had restrictions, and in practice
these restrictions affected women more than
men (the new restrictions on men also meant
that men lost their previous universal suffrage).
Although women could vote, they could be elected
only in the Senate and not in the Chamber
of Deputies (Article 4 (c)). (the Senate was
later abolished in 1940). Due to the historical
context of the time, which included the dictatorship
of Ion Antonescu, there were no elections
in Romania between 1940–1946. In 1946, Law
no. 560 gave full equal rights to men and
women to vote and to be elected in the Chamber
of Deputies; and women voted in the Romanian
general election, 1946. The Constitution of
1948 gave women and men equal civil and political
rights (Article 18). Until the collapse of
communism in 1989, all the candidates were
chosen by the communist party, and civil rights
were merely symbolic under this authoritarian
regime.
==== Russia ====
Despite initial apprehension against enfranchising
women for the right to vote for the upcoming
Constituent Assembly election, the League
for Women's Equality and other suffragists
rallied throughout the year of 1917 for the
right to vote. After much pressure (including
a 40,000-strong march on the Tauride Palace),
on July 20, 1917 the Provisional Government
enfranchised women with the right to vote.
==== San Marino ====
San Marino introduced women's suffrage in
1959, following the 1957 constitutional crisis
known as Fatti di Rovereta. It was however
only in 1973 that women obtained the right
to stand for election.
==== Spain ====
During the Miguel Primo de Rivera regime (1923–1930)
only women who were considered heads of household
were allowed to vote in local elections, but
there were none at that time. Women's suffrage
was officially adopted in 1931 despite the
opposition of Margarita Nelken and Victoria
Kent, two female MPs (both members of the
Republican Radical-Socialist Party), who argued
that women in Spain at that moment lacked
social and political education enough to vote
responsibly because they would be unduly influenced
by Catholic priests. During the Franco regime
in the "organic democracy" type of elections
called "referendums" (Franco's regime was
dictatorial) women over 21 were allowed to
vote without distinction. From 1976, during
the Spanish transition to democracy women
fully exercised the right to vote and be elected
to office.
==== Sweden ====
During the Age of Liberty (1718–1772), Sweden
had conditional women suffrage. Until the
reform of 1865, the local elections consisted
of mayoral elections in the cities, and elections
of parish vicars in the countryside parishes.
The Sockenstämma was the local parish council
who handled local affairs, in which the parish
vicar presided and the local peasantry assembled
and voted, an informally regulated process
in which women are reported to have participated
already in the 17th century. The national
elections consisted of the election of the
representations to the Riksdag of the Estates.
Suffrage was gender neutral and therefore
applied to women as well as men if they filled
the qualifications of a voting citizen. These
qualifications were changed during the course
of the 18th-century, as well as the local
interpretation of the credentials, affecting
the number of qualified voters: the qualifications
also differed between cities and countryside,
as well as local or national elections.Initially,
the right to vote in local city elections
(mayoral elections) was granted to every burgher,
which was defined as a taxpaying citizen with
a guild membership. Women as well as men were
members of guilds, which resulted in women
suffrage for a limited number of women.
In 1734, suffrage in both national and local
elections, in cities as well as countryside,
was granted to every property owning taxpaying
citizen of legal majority. This extended suffrage
to all taxpaying property owning women whether
guild members or not, but excluded married
women and the majority of unmarried women,
as married women were defined as legal minors,
and unmarried women were minors unless they
applied for legal majority by royal dispensation,
while widowed and divorced women were of legal
majority. The 1734 reform increased the participation
of women in elections from 55 to 71 percent.
Between 1726 and 1742, women voted in 17 of
31 examined mayoral elections. Reportedly,
some women voters in mayoral elections preferred
to appoint a male to vote for them by proxy
in the city hall because they found it embarrassing
to do so in person, which was cited as a reason
to abolish women suffrage by its opponents.
The custom to appoint to vote by proxy was
however used also by males, and it was in
fact common for men, who were absent or ill
during elections, to appoint their wives to
vote for them.
In 1758, women were excluded from mayoral
elections by a new regulation by which they
could no longer be defined as burghers, but
women suffrage was kept in the national elections
as well as the country side parish elections.
Women participated in all of the eleven national
elections held up until 1757. In 1772, women
suffrage in national elections was abolished
by demand from the burgher estate. Women suffrage
was first abolished for taxpaying unmarried
women of legal majority, and then for widows.
However, the local interpretation of the prohibition
of women suffrage varied, and some cities
continued to allow women to vote: in Kalmar,
Växjö, Västervik, Simrishamn, Ystad, Åmål,
Karlstad, Bergslagen, Dalarna and Norrland,
women were allowed to continue to vote despite
the 1772 ban, while in Lund, Uppsala, Skara,
Åbo, Gothenburg and Marstrand, women were
strictly barred from the vote after 1772.
While women suffrage was banned in the mayoral
elections in 1758 and in the national elections
in 1772, no such bar was ever introduced in
the local elections in the country side, were
women therefore continued to vote in the local
parish elections of vicars. In a series of
reforms in 1813–1817, unmarried women of
legal majority, "Unmarried maiden, who has
been declared of legal majority", were given
the right to vote in the sockestämma (local
parish council, the predecessor of the communal
and city councils), and the kyrkoråd (local
church councils).In 1823, a suggestion was
raised by the mayor of Strängnäs to reintroduce
women suffrage for taxpaying women of legal
majority (unmarried, divorced and widowed
women) in the mayoral elections, and this
right was reintroduced in 1858.In 1862, tax-paying
women of legal majority (unmarried, divorced
and widowed women) were again allowed to vote
in municipal elections, making Sweden the
first country in the world to grant women
the right to vote. This was after the introduction
of a new political system, where a new local
authority was introduced: the communal municipal
council. The right to vote in municipal elections
applied only to people of legal majority,
which excluded married women, as they were
juridically under the guardianship of their
husbands. In 1884 the suggestion to grant
women the right to vote in national elections
was initially voted down in Parliament. During
the 1880s, the Married Woman's Property Rights
Association had a campaign to encourage the
female voters, qualified to vote in accordance
with the 1862 law, to use their vote and increase
the participation of women voters in the elections,
but there was yet no public demand to women
suffrage among women. In 1888, the temperance
activist Emilie Rathou became the first woman
in Sweden to demand the right for women suffrage
in a public speech. In 1899, a delegation
from the Fredrika Bremer Association presented
a suggestion of woman suffrage to prime minister
Erik Gustaf Boström. The delegation was headed
by Agda Montelius, accompanied by Gertrud
Adelborg, who had written the demand. This
was the first time the Swedish women's movement
themselves had officially presented a demand
for suffrage.
In 1902 the Swedish Society for Woman Suffrage
was founded. In 1906 the suggestion of women's
suffrage was voted down in parliament again.
In 1909, the right to vote in municipal elections
were extended to include also married women.
The same year, women were granted eligibility
to municipal councils, and in the following
1910–11 municipal elections, forty women
were elected to different municipal councils,
Gertrud Månsson being the first. In 1914
Emilia Broomé became the first woman in the
legislative assembly.The right to vote in
national elections was not returned to women
until 1919, and was practised again in the
election of 1921, for the first time in 150
years.After the 1921 election, the first women
were elected to Swedish Parliament after the
suffrage: Kerstin Hesselgren in the Upper
chamber and Nelly Thüring (Social Democrat),
Agda Östlund (Social Democrat) Elisabeth
Tamm (liberal) and Bertha Wellin (Conservative)
in the Lower chamber. Karin Kock-Lindberg
became the first female government minister,
and in 1958, Ulla Lindström became the first
acting Prime Minister.
==== Switzerland ====
A referendum on women's suffrage was held
on 1 February 1959. The majority of Switzerland's
men (67%) voted against it, but in some French-speaking
cantons women obtained the vote. The first
Swiss woman to hold political office, Trudy
Späth-Schweizer, was elected to the municipal
government of Riehen in 1958.Switzerland was
the last Western republic to grant women's
suffrage; they gained the right to vote in
federal elections in 1971 after a second referendum
that year. In 1991 following a decision by
the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland,
Appenzell Innerrhoden became the last Swiss
canton to grant women the vote on local issues.The
first female member of the seven-member Swiss
Federal Council, Elisabeth Kopp, served from
1984 to 1989. Ruth Dreifuss, the second female
member, served from 1993 to 1999, and was
the first female President of the Swiss Confederation
for the year 1999. From 22 September 2010
until 31 December 2011 the highest political
executive of the Swiss Confederation had a
majority of female councillors (4 of 7); for
the three years 2010, 2011, and 2012 Switzerland
was presided by female presidency for three
years in a row; the latest one was for the
year 2017.
==== Turkey ====
In Turkey, Atatürk, the founding president
of the republic, led a secularist cultural
and legal transformation supporting women's
rights including voting and being elected.
Women won the right to vote in municipal elections
on March 20, 1930. Women's suffrage was achieved
for parliamentary elections on December 5,
1934, through a constitutional amendment.
Turkish women, who participated in parliamentary
elections for the first time on February 8,
1935, obtained 18 seats.
In the early republic, when Atatürk ran a
one-party state, his party picked all candidates.
A small percentage of seats were set aside
for women, so naturally those female candidates
won. When multi-party elections began in the
1940s, the share of women in the legislature
fell, and the 4% share of parliamentary seats
gained in 1935 was not reached again until
1999. In the parliament of 2011, women hold
about 9% of the seats. Nevertheless, Turkish
women gained the right to vote a decade or
more before women in such Western European
countries as France, Italy, and Belgium — a
mark of Atatürk's far-reaching social changes.
==== United Kingdom ====
The campaign for women's suffrage in the United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland gained
momentum throughout the early part of the
19th century, as women became increasingly
politically active, particularly during the
campaigns to reform suffrage in the United
Kingdom. John Stuart Mill, elected to Parliament
in 1865 and an open advocate of female suffrage
(about to publish The Subjection of Women),
campaigned for an amendment to the Reform
Act 1832 to include female suffrage. Roundly
defeated in an all-male parliament under a
Conservative government, the issue of women's
suffrage came to the fore.
Until the 1832 Reform Act specified "male
persons", a few women had been able to vote
in parliamentary elections through property
ownership, although this was rare. In local
government elections, single women ratepayers
received the right to vote in the Municipal
Franchise Act 1869. This right was confirmed
in the Local Government Act 1894 and extended
to include some married women. By 1900, more
than 1 million single women were registered
to vote in local government elections in England.In
1881, the Isle of Man (in the British Isles
but not part of the United Kingdom) passed
a law giving the vote to single and widowed
women who passed a property qualification.
This was to vote in elections for the House
of Keys, in the Island's parliament, Tynwald.
This was extended to universal suffrage for
men and women in 1919..
During the later half of the 19th century,
a number of campaign groups for women's suffrage
in national elections were formed in an attempt
to lobby Members of Parliament and gain support.
In 1897, seventeen of these groups came together
to form the National Union of Women's Suffrage
Societies (NUWSS), who held public meetings,
wrote letters to politicians and published
various texts. In 1907 the NUWSS organized
its first large procession. This march became
known as the Mud March as over 3,000 women
trudged through the streets of London from
Hyde Park to Exeter Hall to advocate women's
suffrage.In 1903 a number of members of the
NUWSS broke away and, led by Emmeline Pankhurst,
formed the Women's Social and Political Union
(WSPU). As the national media lost interest
in the suffrage campaign, the WSPU decided
it would use other methods to create publicity.
This began in 1905 at a meeting in Manchester's
Free Trade Hall where Edward Grey, 1st Viscount
Grey of Fallodon, a member of the newly elected
Liberal government, was speaking. As he was
talking, Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney
of the WSPU constantly shouted out, "Will
the Liberal Government give votes to women?"
When they refused to cease calling out, police
were called to evict them and the two suffragettes
(as members of the WSPU became known after
this incident) were involved in a struggle
which ended with them being arrested and charged
for assault. When they refused to pay their
fine, they were sent to prison for one week,
and three days. The British public were shocked
and took notice at this use of violence to
win the vote for women.
After this media success, the WSPU's tactics
became increasingly violent. This included
an attempt in 1908 to storm the House of Commons,
the arson of David Lloyd George's country
home (despite his support for women's suffrage).
In 1909 Lady Constance Lytton was imprisoned,
but immediately released when her identity
was discovered, so in 1910 she disguised herself
as a working class seamstress called Jane
Warton and endured inhumane treatment which
included force-feeding. In 1913, suffragette
Emily Davison protested by interfering with
a horse owned by King George V during the
running of The Derby; she was trampled and
died four days later. The WSPU ceased their
militant activities during World War I and
agreed to assist with the war effort.The National
Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, which
had always employed "constitutional" methods,
continued to lobby during the war years, and
compromises were worked out between the NUWSS
and the coalition government. The Speaker's
Conference on electoral reform (1917) represented
all the parties in both houses, and came to
the conclusion that women's suffrage was essential.
Regarding fears that women would suddenly
move from zero to a majority of the electorate
due to the heavy loss of men during the war,
the Conference recommended that the age restriction
be 21 for men, and 30 for women.On 6 February
1918, the Representation of the People Act
1918 was passed, enfranchising women over
the age of 30 who met minimum property qualifications.
About 8.4 million women gained the vote in
Great Britain and Ireland. In November 1918,
the Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act
1918 was passed, allowing women to be elected
into Parliament. The Representation of the
People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928 extended
the franchise in Great Britain and Northern
Ireland to all women over the age of 21, granting
women the vote on the same terms as men.In
1999, Time magazine, in naming Emmeline Pankhurst
as one of the 100 Most Important People of
the 20th Century, states: "...she shaped an
idea of women for our time; she shook society
into a new pattern from which there could
be no going back".
=== Oceania ===
==== Australia ====
The female descendants of the Bounty mutineers
who lived on Pitcairn Islands could vote from
1838, and this right transferred with their
resettlement to Norfolk Island (now an Australian
external territory) in 1856.
Propertied women in the colony of South Australia
were granted the vote in local elections (but
not parliamentary elections) in 1861. Henrietta
Dugdale formed the first Australian women's
suffrage society in Melbourne, Victoria in
1884. Women became eligible to vote for the
Parliament of South Australia in 1895, as
were Aboriginal men and women. In 1897, Catherine
Helen Spence became the first female political
candidate for political office, unsuccessfully
standing for election as a delegate to Federal
Convention on Australian Federation. Western
Australia granted voting rights to women in
1899.The first election for the Parliament
of the newly formed Commonwealth of Australia
in 1901 was based on the electoral provisions
of the six pre-existing colonies, so that
women who had the vote and the right to stand
for Parliament at state level had the same
rights for the 1901 Australian Federal election.
In 1902, the Commonwealth Parliament passed
the Commonwealth Franchise Act, which enabled
all women to vote and stand for election for
the Federal Parliament, and also . Four women
stood for election in 1903. The Act specifically
excluded 'natives' from Commonwealth franchise
unless already enrolled in a state, the situation
in South Australia. In 1949, the right to
vote in federal elections was extended to
all indigenous people who had served in the
armed forces, or were enrolled to vote in
state elections (Queensland, Western Australia,
and the Northern Territory still excluded
indigenous women from voting rights). Remaining
restrictions were abolished in 1962 by the
Commonwealth Electoral Act.Edith Cowan was
elected to the Western Australian Legislative
Assembly in 1921, the first woman elected
to any Australian Parliament. Dame Enid Lyons,
in the Australian House of Representatives
and Senator Dorothy Tangney became the first
women in the Federal Parliament in 1943. Lyons
went on to be the first woman to hold a Cabinet
post in the 1949 ministry of Robert Menzies.
Rosemary Follett was elected Chief Minister
of the Australian Capital Territory in 1989,
becoming the first woman elected to lead a
state or territory. By 2010, the people of
Australia's oldest city, Sydney had female
leaders occupying every major political office
above them, with Clover Moore as Lord Mayor,
Kristina Keneally as Premier of New South
Wales, Marie Bashir as Governor of New South
Wales, Julia Gillard as Prime Minister, Quentin
Bryce as Governor-General of Australia and
Elizabeth II as Queen of Australia.
==== Cook Islands ====
Women in Rarotonga won the right to vote in
1893, shortly after New Zealand.
==== New Zealand ====
New Zealand's Electoral Act of 19 September
1893 made this country the first in the world
to grant women the right to vote in parliamentary
elections.Although the Liberal government
which passed the bill generally advocated
social and political reform, the electoral
bill was only passed because of a combination
of personality issues and political accident.
The bill granted the vote to women of all
races. New Zealand women were denied the right
to stand for parliament, however, until 1920.
In 2005 almost a third of the Members of Parliament
elected were female. Women recently have also
occupied powerful and symbolic offices such
as those of Prime Minister (Jenny Shipley,
Helen Clark and current PM Jacinda Ardern),
Governor-General (Catherine Tizard and Silvia
Cartwright), Chief Justice (Sian Elias), Speaker
of the House of Representatives (Margaret
Wilson), and from 3 March 2005 to 23 August
2006, all four of these posts were held by
women, along with Queen Elizabeth as Head
of State.
=== The Americas ===
Women in Central and South America lagged
behind those in North America in gaining the
vote. Ecuador enfranchised women in 1929 and
the last was Paraguay in 1961. By date of
full suffrage:
There were political, religious, and cultural
debates about women's suffrage in the various
countries. Important advocates for women's
suffrage include Hermila Galindo (Mexico),
Eva Perón (Argentina), Alicia Moreau de Justo
(Argentina), Julieta Lanteri (Argentina),
Celina Guimarães Viana (Brazil), Ivone Guimarães
(Brazil), Henrietta Müller (Chile), Marta
Vergara (Chile), Lucila Rubio de Laverde (Colombia),
María Currea Manrique (Colombia), Josefa
Toledo de Aguirre (Nicaragua), Elida Campodónico
(Panama), Clara González (Panama), Gumercinda
Páez (Panama), Paulina Luisi Janicki (Uruguay),
Carmen Clemente Travieso, (Venezuela).
==== Canada ====
Women's political status without the vote
was promoted by the National Council of Women
of Canada from 1894 to 1918. It promoted a
vision of "transcendent citizenship" for women.
The ballot was not needed, for citizenship
was to be exercised through personal influence
and moral suasion, through the election of
men with strong moral character, and through
raising public-spirited sons. The National
Council position was integrated into its nation-building
program that sought to uphold Canada as a
White settler nation. While the women's suffrage
movement was important for extending the political
rights of White women, it was also authorized
through race-based arguments that linked White
women's enfranchisement to the need to protect
the nation from "racial degeneration."Women
had local votes in some provinces, as in Ontario
from 1850, where women owning property (freeholders
and householders) could vote for school trustees.
By 1900 other provinces had adopted similar
provisions, and in 1916 Manitoba took the
lead in extending women's suffrage. Simultaneously
suffragists gave strong support to the Prohibition
movement, especially in Ontario and the Western
provinces.The Wartime Elections Act of 1917
gave the vote to British women who were war
widows or had sons, husbands, fathers, or
brothers serving overseas. Unionist Prime
Minister Sir Robert Borden pledged himself
during the 1917 campaign to equal suffrage
for women. After his landslide victory, he
introduced a bill in 1918 for extending the
franchise to women. On 24 May 1918, women
considered citizens (not Aboriginal women,
or most women of colour) became eligible to
vote who were "age 21 or older, not alien-born
and meet property requirements in provinces
where they exist".Most women of Quebec gained
full suffrage in 1940. Aboriginal women across
Canada were not given federal voting rights
until 1960.The first woman elected to Parliament
was Agnes Macphail in Ontario in 1921.
==== United States ====
Before the Nineteenth Amendment was passed
in 1920, some individual U.S. states granted
women suffrage in certain kinds of elections.
Some allowed women to vote in school elections,
municipal elections, or for members of the
Electoral College. Some territories, like
Washington, Utah, and Wyoming, allowed women
to vote before they became states.The New
Jersey constitution of 1776 enfranchised all
adult inhabitants who owned a specified amount
of property. Laws enacted in 1790 and 1797
referred to voters as "he or she", and women
regularly voted. A law passed in 1807, however,
excluded women from voting in that state.Lydia
Taft was an early forerunner in Colonial America
who was allowed to vote in three New England
town meetings, beginning in 1756, at Uxbridge,
Massachusetts. The women's suffrage movement
was closely tied to abolitionism, with many
suffrage activists gaining their first experience
as anti-slavery activists.In June 1848, Gerrit
Smith made women's suffrage a plank in the
Liberty Party platform. In July, at the Seneca
Falls Convention in upstate New York, activists
including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan
B. Anthony began a seventy-year struggle by
women to secure the right to vote. Attendees
signed a document known as the Declaration
of Rights and Sentiments, of which Stanton
was the primary author. Equal rights became
the rallying cry of the early movement for
women's rights, and equal rights meant claiming
access to all the prevailing definitions of
freedom. In 1850 Lucy Stone organized a larger
assembly with a wider focus, the National
Women's Rights Convention in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Susan B. Anthony, a resident of Rochester,
New York, joined the cause in 1852 after reading
Stone's 1850 speech. Stanton, Stone and Anthony
were the three leading figures of this movement
in the U.S. during the 19th century: the "triumvirate"
of the drive to gain voting rights for women.
Women's suffrage activists pointed out that
black people had been granted the franchise
and had not been included in the language
of the United States Constitution's Fourteenth
and Fifteenth amendments (which gave people
equal protection under the law and the right
to vote regardless of their race, respectively).
This, they contended, had been unjust. Early
victories were won in the territories of Wyoming
(1869) and Utah (1870).
John Allen Campbell, the first Governor of
the Wyoming Territory, approved the first
law in United States history explicitly granting
women the right to vote. The law was approved
on December 10, 1869. This day was later commemorated
as Wyoming Day. On February 12, 1870, the
Secretary of the Territory and Acting Governor
of the Territory of Utah, S. A. Mann, approved
a law allowing twenty-one-year-old women to
vote in any election in Utah.Utah women were
disenfranchised by provisions of the federal
Edmunds–Tucker Act enacted by the U.S. Congress
in 1887.
The push to grant Utah women's suffrage was
at least partially fueled by the belief that,
given the right to vote, Utah women would
dispose of polygamy. It was only after Utah
women exercised their suffrage rights in favor
of polygamy that the U.S. Congress disenfranchised
Utah women.By the end of the 19th century,
Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming had enfranchised
women after effort by the suffrage associations
at the state level; Colorado notably enfranchised
women by an 1893 referendum.
During the beginning of the 20th century,
as women's suffrage faced several important
federal votes, a portion of the suffrage movement
known as the National Woman's Party led by
suffragist Alice Paul became the first "cause"
to picket outside the White House. Paul had
been mentored by Emmeline Pankhurst while
in England, and both she and Lucy Burns led
a series of protests against the Wilson Administration
in Washington.
Wilson ignored the protests for six months,
but on June 20, 1917, as a Russian delegation
drove up to the White House, suffragists unfurled
a banner which stated: "We women of America
tell you that America is not a democracy.
Twenty million women are denied the right
to vote. President Wilson is the chief opponent
of their national enfranchisement". Another
banner on August 14, 1917, referred to "Kaiser
Wilson" and compared the plight of the German
people with that of American women. With this
manner of protest, the women were subject
to arrests and many were jailed. Another ongoing
tactic of the National Woman's Party was watchfires,
which involved burning copies of President
Wilson's speeches, often outside the White
House or in the nearby Lafayette Park. The
Party continued to hold watchfires even as
the war began, drawing criticism from the
public and even other suffrage groups for
being unpatriotic. On October 17, Alice Paul
was sentenced to seven months and on October
30 began a hunger strike, but after a few
days prison authorities began to force feed
her. After years of opposition, Wilson changed
his position in 1918 to advocate women's suffrage
as a war measure.
The key vote came on June 4, 1919, when the
Senate approved the amendment by 56 to 25
after four hours of debate, during which Democratic
Senators opposed to the amendment filibustered
to prevent a roll call until their absent
Senators could be protected by pairs. The
Ayes included 36 (82%) Republicans and 20
(54%) Democrats. The Nays comprised 8 (18%)
Republicans and 17 (46%) Democrats. The Nineteenth
Amendment, which prohibited state or federal
sex-based restrictions on voting, was ratified
by sufficient states in 1920. According to
the article, "Nineteenth Amendment", by Leslie
Goldstein from the Encyclopedia of the Supreme
Court of the United States, "by the end it
also included jail sentences, and hunger strikes
in jail accompanied by brutal force feedings;
mob violence; and legislative votes so close
that partisans were carried in on stretchers"
(Goldstein, 2008). Even after the Nineteenth
Amendment was ratified, women were still facing
problems. For instance, when women had registered
to vote in Maryland, "residents sued to have
the women's names removed from the registry
on the grounds that the amendment itself was
unconstitutional" (Goldstein, 2008).
Before 1965, women of color, such as African
Americans and Native Americans, were disenfranchised,
especially in the South. The Voting Rights
Act of 1965 prohibited racial discrimination
in voting, and secured voting rights for racial
minorities throughout the U.S.
==== Argentina ====
The modern suffragist movement in Argentina
arose partly in conjunction with the activities
of the Socialist Party and anarchists of the
early twentieth century. Women involved in
larger movements for social justice began
to agitate equal rights and opportunities
on par with men; following the example of
their European peers, Elvira Dellepiane Rawson,
Cecilia Grierson and Alicia Moreau de Justo
began to form a number of groups in defense
of the civil rights of women between 1900
and 1910. The first major victories for extending
the civil rights of women occurred in the
Province of San Juan. Women had been allowed
to vote in that province since 1862, but only
in municipal elections. A similar right was
extended in the province of Santa Fe where
a constitution that ensured women's suffrage
was enacted at the municipal level, although
female participation in votes initially remained
low. In 1927, San Juan sanctioned its Constitution
and broadly recognized the equal rights of
men and women. However, the 1930 coup overthrew
these advances.
A great pioneer of women's suffrage was Julieta
Lanteri, the daughter of Italian immigrants,
who in 1910 requested a national court to
grant her the right to citizenship (at the
time not generally given to single female
immigrants) as well as suffrage. The Claros
judge upheld her request and declared: "As
a judge, I have a duty to declare that her
right to citizenship is enshrined in the Constitution,
and therefore that women enjoy the same political
rights as the laws grant to male citizens,
with the only restrictions expressly determined
such laws, because no inhabitant is deprived
of what they do not prohibit."
In July 1911, Dr. Lanteri were enumerated,
and on November 26 of that year exercised
her right to vote, the first Ibero-American
woman to vote. Also covered in a judgment
in 1919 was presented as a candidate for national
deputy for the Independent Centre Party, obtaining
1,730 votes out of 154,302.
In 1919, Rogelio Araya UCR Argentina had gone
down in history for being the first to submit
a bill recognizing the right to vote for women,
an essential component of universal suffrage.
On July 17, 1919, he served as deputy national
on behalf of the people of Santa Fe.
On February 27, 1946, three days after the
elections that consecrated president Juan
Perón and his wife First Lady Eva Perón
26 years of age gave his first political speech
in an organized women to thank them for their
support of Perón's candidacy. On that occasion,
Eva demanded equal rights for men and women
and particularly, women's suffrage:
The woman Argentina has exceeded the period
of civil tutorials. Women must assert their
action, women should vote. The woman, moral
spring home, you should take the place in
the complex social machinery of the people.
He asks a necessity new organize more extended
and remodeled groups. It requires, in short,
the transformation of the concept of woman
who sacrificially has increased the number
of its duties without seeking the minimum
of their rights.
The bill was presented the new constitutional
government assumed immediately after the May
1, 1946. The opposition of conservative bias
was evident, not only the opposition parties
but even within parties who supported Peronism.
Eva Perón constantly pressured the parliament
for approval, even causing protests from the
latter for this intrusion.
Although it was a brief text in three articles,
that practically could not give rise to discussions,
the Senate recently gave preliminary approval
to the project August 21, 1946, and had to
wait over a year for the House of Representative
to publish the September 9, 1947 Law 13,010,
establishing equal political rights between
men and women and universal suffrage in Argentina.
Finally, Law 13,010 was approved unanimously.
In an official statement on national television,
Eva Perón announced the extension of suffrage
to Argentina's women:
Women of this country, this very instant I
receive from the Government the law that enshrines
our civic rights. And I receive it in front
of you, with the confidence that I do so on
behalf and in the name of all Argentinian
women. I do so joyously, as I feel my hands
tremble upon contact with victory proclaiming
laurels. Here it is, my sisters, summarized
into few articles of compact letters lies
a long history of battles, stumbles, and hope.
Because of this, in it there lie exasperating
indignation, shadows of menacing sunsets,
but also cheerful awakenings of triumphal
auroras. And the latter which translates the
victory of women over the incomprehensions,
the denials, and the interests created by
the castes now repudiated by our national
awakening.
And a leader who destiny forged to victoriously
face the problems of our era, General [Perón].
With him, and our vote we shall contribute
to the perfection of Argentina's democracy,
my dear comrades.
On 23 September 1947, they enacted the Female
Enrollment Act (No. 13,010) during the first
presidency of Juan Domingo Perón, which was
implemented in the elections of November 11,
1951, in which 3,816,654 women voted (63.9%
voted for the Justicialist Party and 30.8%
for the Radical Civic Union). Later in 1952,
the first 23 senators and deputies took their
seats, representing the Justicialist Party.
==== Brazil ====
Women were granted the right to vote and be
elected in Electoral Code of 1932, followed
by Brazilian Constitution of 1934. However,
the law of Rio Grande do Norte State has allowed
women to vote since 1926. The struggle for
women's suffrage was part of a larger movement
to gain rights for women.
==== Chile ====
Debate about women's suffrage in Chile began
in the 1920s. Women's suffrage in municipal
elections was first established in 1931 by
decree (decreto con fuerza de ley); voting
age for women was set at 25 years. In addition,
the Chamber of Deputies approved a law on
March 9, 1933 establishing women's suffrage
in municipal elections.Women obtained the
legal right to vote in parliamentary and presidential
elections in 1949. Women's share among voters
increased steadily after 1949, reaching the
same levels of participation as men in 1970.
==== Mexico ====
The liberal Mexican Constitution of 1857 did
not bar women from voting in Mexico or holding
office, but "election laws restricted the
suffrage to males, and in practice women did
not participate nor demand a part in politics,"
with framers being indifferent to the issue.
Years of civil war and the French intervention
delayed any consideration of women's role
in Mexican political life, but during the
Restored Republic and the Porfiriato (1876–1911),
women began organizing to expand their civil
rights, including suffrage. Socialist publications
in Mexico began advocating changes in law
and practice as early as 1878. The journal
La Internacional articulated a detailed program
of reform that aimed at "the emancipation,
rehabilitation, and integral education of
women." The era of the Porfiriato did not
record changes in law regarding the status
of women, but women began entering professions
requiring higher education: law, medicine,
and pharmacy (requiring a university degree),
but also teaching. Liberalism placed great
importance on secular education, so that the
public school system ranks of the teaching
profession expanded in the late nineteenth
century, which benefited females wishing to
teach and education for girls.
The status of women in Mexico became an issue
during the Mexican Revolution, with Francisco
I. Madero, the challenger to the continued
presidency of Porfirio Diaz interested in
the rights of Mexican women. Madero was part
of a rich estate-owning family in the northern
state of Coahuila, who had attended University
of California, Berkeley briefly and traveled
in Europe, absorbing liberal ideas and practices.
Madero's wife as well as his female personal
assistant, Soledad González, "unquestionably
enhanced his interest in women's rights."
González was one of the orphans that the
Maderos adopted; she learned typing and stenography,
and traveled to Mexico City following Madero's
election as president in 1911. Madero's brief
presidential term was tumultuous, and with
no previous political experience, Madero was
unable to forward the cause of women's suffrage.
Following his ouster by military coup led
by Victoriano Huerta and Madero's assassination,
those taking up Madero's cause and legacy,
the Constitutionalists (named after the liberal
Constitution of 1857) began to discuss women's
rights. Venustiano Carranza, former governor
of Coahuila, and following Madero's assassination,
the "first chief" of the Constitutionalists.
Carranza also had an influential female private
secretary, Hermila Galindo, who was a champion
of women's rights in Mexico.In asserting his
Carranza promulgated political plan Plan de
Guadalupe in 1914, enumerating in standard
Mexican fashion, his aims as he sought supporters.
In the "Additions" to the Plan de Guadalupe,
Carranza made some important statements that
affected families and the status of women
in regards to marriage. In December 1914,
Carranza issued a decree that legalized divorce
under certain circumstances. Although the
decree did not lead to women's suffrage, it
eased somewhat restrictions that still existed
in the civil even after the nineteenth-century
liberal Reforma established the State's right
to regulate marriage as a civil rather than
an ecclesiastical matter.
There was increased advocacy for women's rights
in the late 1910s, with the founding of a
new feminist magazine, Mujer Moderna, which
ceased publication in 1919. Mexico saw several
international women's rights congresses, the
first being held in Mérida, Yucatán, in
1916. The International Congress of Women
had some 700 delegates attend, but did not
result in lasting changes.As women's suffrage
made progress in Great Britain and the United
States, in Mexico there was an echo. Carranza,
who was elected president in 1916, called
for a convention to draft a new Mexican Constitution
that incorporated gains for particular groups,
such as the industrial working class and the
peasantry seeking land reform. It also incorporated
increased restrictions on the Roman Catholic
Church in Mexico, an extension of the anticlericalism
in the Constitution of 1857. The Constitution
of 1917 did not explicitly empower women's
access to the ballot.
In the northern Mexican state of Sonora, Mexican
women pushed for more rights for women, including
the vote. Emélida Carrillo and school teacher
María de Jesús Váldez led the effort. Notably,
the movement for Mexican women's rights there
was linked to the movement to exclude and
expel Chinese in Mexico, racial essentialism
that was also seen in the suffrage movement
in the U.S., but generally not elsewhere in
Latin America.In 1937, Mexican feminists challenged
the wording of the Constitution concerning
who is eligible for citizenship – the Constitution
did not specify "men and women." María del
Refugio García ran for election as a Sole
Front for Women's Rights candidate for her
home district, Uruapan. García won by a huge
margin, but was not allowed to take her seat
because the government would have to amend
the Constitution. In response, García went
on a hunger strike outside President Lázaro
Cárdenas' residence in Mexico City for 11
days in August 1937. Cárdenas responded by
promising to change Article 34 in the Constitution
that September. By December, the amendment
had been passed by congress, and women were
granted full citizenship. However, the vote
for women in Mexico was not granted until
1953. The history and meaning of the women's
vote in Mexico has been examined.Women gained
the right to vote in 1947 for some local elections
and for national elections in 1953.
==== Venezuela ====
After the 1928 Student Protests, women started
participating more actively in politics. In
1935, women's rights supporters founded the
Feminine Cultural Group (known as 'ACF' from
its initials in Spanish), with the goal of
tackling women's problems. The group supported
women's political and social rights, and believed
it was necessary to involve and inform women
about these issues in order to ensure their
personal development. It went on to give seminars,
as well as founding night schools and the
House of Laboring Women.
Groups looking to reform the 1936 Civil Code
of Conduct in conjunction with the Venezuelan
representation to the Union of American Women
called the First Feminine Venezuelan Congress
in 1940. In this congress, delegates discussed
the situation of women in Venezuela and their
demands. Key goals were women's suffrage and
a reform to the Civil Code of Conduct. Around
twelve thousand signatures were collected
and handed to the Venezuelan Congress, which
reformed the Civil Code of Conduct in 1942.
In 1944, groups supporting women's suffrage,
the most important being Feminine Action,
organized around the country. During 1945,
women attained the right to vote at a municipal
level. This was followed by a stronger call
of action. Feminine Action began editing a
newspaper called the Correo Cívico Femenino,
to connect, inform and orientate Venezuelan
women in their struggle. Finally, after the
1945 Venezuelan Coup d'État and the call
for a new Constitution, to which women were
elected, women's suffrage became a constitutional
right in the country.
== Women's suffrage in non-religious organizations
==
The right of women to vote has sometimes been
denied in non-religious organizations; for
example, it was not until 1964 that women
in the National Association of the Deaf in
the United States were first allowed to vote.
== Women's suffrage in religions ==
=== Catholicism ===
The Pope is elected by the College of Cardinals.
Women are not appointed as cardinals, and
therefore women cannot vote for the Pope.
The female Catholic offices of Abbess or Mother
Superior are elective, the choice being made
by the secret votes of the nuns belonging
to the community.
=== Islam ===
In the United States, some mosques have constitutions
prohibiting women from voting in board elections.
=== Judaism ===
In Conservative Judaism, Reform Judaism and
other liberal Jewish movements women have
the right to vote. Since the 1970s, more and
more Modern Orthodox synagogues and religious
organizations have been granting women the
rights to vote and to be elected to their
governing bodies. In a few Ultra-Orthodox
Jewish communities women are denied the vote
or the ability to be elected to positions
of authority.
== Timelines ==
Timeline of first women's suffrage in majority-Muslim
countries
Timeline of women's suffrage
Timeline of women's legal rights (other than
voting)
== See also ==
Anti-suffragism
List of monuments and memorials to women's
suffrage
List of suffragists and suffragettes
List of the first female holders of political
offices in Europe
List of women's rights activists
Open Christmas Letter
Silent Sentinels
Suffrage Hikes
Women's suffrage movement in Washington
Women's suffrage organizations
Women's work
Woman suffrage parade of 1913
== Notes ==
== Further reading ==
Bock, Gisela. Das politische Denken des Suffragismus:
Deutschland um 1900 im internationalen Vergleich,
in: Gisela Bock: Geschlechtergeschichten der
Neuzeit, Goettingen 2014, 168–203.
Bush, Julia. Women against the vote: female
anti-suffragism in Britain (Oxford UP, 2007).
Crawford, Elizabeth. The Women's Suffrage
Movement: A Reference Guide, 1866-1928 (1999),
worldwide coverage; 800pp; online
Hannam, June, Mitzi Auchterlonie, and Katherine
Holden. International encyclopedia of women's
suffrage (Abc-Clio Inc, 2000).
Hannam, June. "International Dimensions of
Women's Suffrage: ‘at the crossroads of
several interlocking identities’" Women's
History Review 14.3–4 (2005): 543–560.
Lloyd, Trevor, Suffragettes International:
The Worldwide Campaign for Women's Rights
(New York: American Heritage Press, 1971).
Markoff, John. "Margins, Centers, and Democracy:
The Paradigmatic History of Women's Suffrage,"
Signs (2003) 29#1 pp. 85–116 in JSTOR
Owens, Rosemary Cullen. Smashing times: A
history of the Irish women's suffrage movement,
1889–1922 (Irish Books & Media, 1984).
Raeburn, Antonia. Militant Suffragettes (London:
New English Library, 1973) on Great Britain
Ramirez, Francisco O., Yasemin Soysal, and
Suzanne Shanahan. "The Changing Logic of Political
Citizenship: Cross-National Acquisition of
Women's Suffrage Rights, 1890 to 1990", American
Sociological Review (1997) 62#5 pp 735–45.
in JSTOR
=== United States ===
Baker, Jean H. Sisters: The Lives of America's
Suffragists. Hill and Wang, New York, 2005.
ISBN 0-8090-9528-9.
Dubois, Carol and Lynn Dumenil, eds. (1999).
"Through Women's Eyes", An American History
with Documents, 456 (475).
DuBois, Ellen Carol. Harriot Stanton Blatch
and the Winning of Woman Suffrage (New Haven
and London: Yale University Press, 1997) ISBN
0-300-06562-0
Flexner, Eleanor, Century of Struggle: The
Woman's Rights Movement in the United States,
enlarged edition with Foreword by Ellen Fitzpatrick
(1959, 1975; Cambridge and London: The Belknap
Press of the Harvard University Press, 1996)
ISBN 0-674-10653-9
Kraditor, Aileen S. Ideas of the Woman Suffrage
Movement, 1890–1920. (1965).
Mackenzie, Midge, Shoulder to Shoulder: A
Documentary (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975).
ISBN 0-394-73070-4
== External links ==
Photo Essay on Women's Suffrage by the International
Museum of Women
Women's Suffrage, "A World Chronology of the
Recognition of Women's Rights to Vote and
to Stand for Election".
Suffrage in Canada
CIA Yearbook: Suffrage
Press release with respect to Qatar and Yemen
UNCG Special Collections and University Archives
selections of American Suffragette manuscripts
Photographs of U.S. suffragettes, marches,
and demonstrations
Ada James papers and correspondence (1915–1918)—a
digital collection presented by the University
of Wisconsin Digital Collections Center. Ada
James (1876–1952) was a leading a social
reformer, humanitarian, and pacifist from
Richland Center, Wisconsin and daughter of
state senator David G. James. The Ada James
papers document the grass roots organizing
and politics required to promote and guarantee
the passage of women's suffrage in Wisconsin
and beyond.
Women´s suffrage in Germany—19 January
1919—first suffrage (active and passive)
for women in Germany
Suffragists vs. Suffragettes—brief article
outlining origins of term "suffragette", usage
of term and links to other sources.
Women in Congress—Information about women
who have served in the U.S. Congress including
historical essays that cover suffrage.
Culture Victoria—historical images and videos
for the Centenary of Women's Suffrage
Woman suffragist, Mary Ellen Ewing vs the
Houston School Board—Collection at the University
of Houston Digital Library.
Gayle Olson-Raymer, "The Early Women's Movement",
17-page teaching guide for high school students,
Zinn Education Project/Rethinking Schools
Women's Suffrage and Equal Rights in the Claremont
Colleges Digital Library
Select "Suffrage" subject, at the Persuasive
Cartography, The PJ Mode Collection, Cornell
University Library
Timeline and Map of Woman Suffrage Legislation
State by State 1838–1919
Women of Protest: Photographs from the Records
of the National Woman's Party
Detailed Chronology of National Woman's *Digitized
items from the [https://www.loc.gov/collections/national-american-woman-suffrage-association/about-this-collection/
National American Women's Suffrage Collection
in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division
of the Library of Congress
