Women's suffrage is the right of women to vote in elections. Historically, women rarely had the right to vote, even in ostensibly democratic systems of government. The 19th century saw many movements advocating "universal [male] suffrage", most notably in Europe and North America; following this, movements for women's suffrage became prominent, and by the mid and late 19th century, women's suffrage was accomplished in Australasia, then Europe, and then the Americas. By the middle of the 20th century, women's suffrage had been established as a norm of democratic governance. Extended political campaigns by women and their male supporters played a central role in changing public attitudes, altering norms, and achieving legislation or constitutional amendments for women's suffrage.
The first wave of women's suffrage took place 1893–1930, covering English-speaking countries, Scandinavian states, and some other parts of Europe. The experience of the First World War has been characterized as an important factor in shifting public support for women's suffrage. The second wave, 1930-1970, covered nearly all Latin-American countries, much of Sub-Saharan Africa and some European laggards (France, Spain, Belgium).
Prior to 1893, there were instances where women could vote in some elections and at the subnational level. The first national granting of women's suffrage was in 1893 in the then self-governing British colony of New Zealand. National and international organizations formed to coordinate efforts towards women voting, especially the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (founded in 1904 in Berlin, Germany). Most major Western powers extended voting rights to women by the interwar period, including Canada (1917), Germany (1918), Austria, the Netherlands (1919), the United States (1920) and the United Kingdom (1928). Notable exceptions in Europe were France, where women could not vote until 1944, Greece (equal voting rights for women did not exist there until 1952, although, since 1930, literate women were able to vote in local elections), and Switzerland (where, since 1971, women could vote at the federal level, and between 1959 and 1990, women got the right to vote at the local canton level).
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
Before the 19th century
In ancient Athens, often cited as the birthplace of democracy, only adult male citizens could vote. Women, slaves, and metics (resident foreigners) could not. Through subsequent centuries, Europe was 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 people of Canada during the 17th century, wrote in 1654 regarding the suffrage practices of Iroquois women: "These female chieftains... have a deciding vote in the councils. They make decisions there like their male counterparts, and it is they who even delegated as first ambassadors to discuss peace." The Iroquois, like many First Nations 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 first independent country to introduce women's suffrage was arguably Sweden. In Sweden, conditional women's suffrage was in effect during the Age of Liberty (1718–1772).
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.
Before the 19th century, some countries granted women the right to vote partially or temporarily:
in Rome, in 1591, during the short pontificate of Pope Innocent IX (November–December 1591), men and women over 14 years old had the right to vote;
in Sweden, between 1718 and 1771, major single or widowed women (married women are excluded), owners, subject to tax and members of guilds are authorized to participate in local and national elections. These rights are annulled in 1758 for local elections and in 1772 for national elections. The right to vote in municipal elections is again granted to major single women, taxable and owners between 1862 and 1919;
the Republic of Corsica in 1755, and until its fall in 1769, implicitly grants the right to vote to single or widowed women (the electoral majority being set at 25 years);
in France, under the Ancien Régime, women legally declared heads of family (widows, single women, or in cases of the husband's absence) had the right to vote in municipal assemblies until 1789. From 1302 until 1789, noble women who owned fiefs and mother abbesses were summoned to the Estates General to elect their representatives. In the elections to the Estates General of 1789, members of religious communities were admitted to vote, as well as, for the Third Estate, heads of agricultural or business operations, and in the cities, members of trade bodies and communities. Women were then explicitly excluded from the electorate starting from the elections to the Legislative Assembly of 1791 and until 1945.
Territorial entities, subnational, non-state or not recognized, also preceded many countries:
the State of New Jersey (United States) from 1776 to 1807 under the condition, as for men, of being themselves owners;
Lower Canada (British colonial province corresponding partially to current Quebec and Labrador), from 1791 and under the condition, as for men, of being themselves owners, restricted in 1834 and finally withdrawn after the Rebellions of 1837–1838, in 1849;
the Pitcairn Islands (United Kingdom dependency) in 1838;
the Mormon State of Deseret (1847) (became Utah in 1850);
the province of Vélez (Colombia) from 1853 to its integration into the federal State of Santander in 1857;
the territory of Wyoming (United States) in 1869 with right to eligibility. A few months later in 1870, a woman is elected justice of the peace in Laramie, the same year in the same city another is elected court bailiff (Court Bailiff);
the territory of Utah (United States) in 1870. A federal Congress act will suppress it in 1887;
the Isle of Man (United Kingdom dependency) in 1881;
the territory of Washington in 1883, suppressed by the federal Supreme Court in 1887;
Wyoming as a state in 1890;
Colorado (United States) in 1893;
the Cook Islands (British protectorate) in 1893;
South Australia (autonomous British colony) from 1895; becomes one of the first territories in the world to allow women to be candidates in legislative elections;
Utah (admission to the Union) and Idaho (United States) in 1896.
Other early instances of women's 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.
South Australian suffragist Catherine Helen Spence stood for office in 1897. In a first for the modern world, South Australia granted women the right to stand for Parliament in 1895.
19th century
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 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 suffrage was introduced in 1840 without mention of sex; however, a constitutional amendment in 1852 rescinded female voting and put property qualifications on male voting.
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 US, women in the Wyoming Territory were permitted to both vote and stand for office in 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.
The 1840 constitution of the Kingdom of Hawaii established a House of Representatives, but did not specify who was eligible to participate in the election of it. Some academics have argued that this omission enabled women to vote in the first elections, in which votes were cast by means of signatures on petitions; but this interpretation remains controversial. The second constitution of 1852 specified that suffrage was restricted to males over twenty years-old.
In 1849, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, in Italy, was the first European state to have a law that provided for the vote of women, for administrative elections, taking up a tradition that was already informally sometimes present in Italy.
The 1853 Constitution of the province of Vélez in the Republic of New Granada, modern day Colombia, allowed for married women, or women older than the age of 21, the right to vote within the province. However, this law was subsequently annulled by the Supreme Court of the Republic, arguing that the citizens of the province could not have more rights than those already guaranteed to the citizens of the other provinces of the country, thus eliminating female suffrage from this province in 1856.
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.
For countries that have their origins in self-governing colonies but later became independent nations in the 20th century, the Colony of New Zealand was the first to acknowledge women's right to vote in 1893, largely due to a movement led by Kate Sheppard. The British protectorate of Cook Islands rendered the same right in 1893 as well. Another British colony, South Australia, followed in 1895, enacting laws which not only extended voting to women, but also made women eligible to stand for election to its parliament.
20th century
Following the federation of the British colonies in Australia in 1901, the new federal government enacted the Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902 which allowed female British subjects to vote and stand for election on the same terms as men. However, many indigenous Australians remained excluded from voting federally until 1962.
The first place in Europe to introduce women's suffrage was the Grand Duchy of Finland in 1906, and it also became the first place in continental Europe to implement racially-equal suffrage for women. As a result of the 1907 parliamentary elections, Finland's voters elected 19 women as the first female members of a representative parliament. This was one of many self-governing actions in the Russian autonomous province that led to conflict with the Russian governor of Finland, ultimately leading to the creation of the Finnish nation in 1917.
In the years before World War I, women in Norway also won the right to vote. During WWI, Denmark, Russia, Germany, and Poland also recognized women's right to vote.
Canada gave right to vote to some women in 1917; women got the vote on the same basis as men in 1920, that is, men and women of certain races or status being excluded from voting until 1960, when universal adult suffrage was achieved.
The Representation of the People Act 1918 saw British women over 30 gain the vote. Dutch women won the passive vote (allowed to run for parliament) after a revision of the Dutch Constitution in 1917 and the active vote (electing representatives) in 1919, and American women on August 26, 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 ages 21 and older. The suffrage of Turkish women was 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.
21st century
One of the most recent jurisdictions to acknowledge women's full right to vote was Bhutan in 2008 (its first national elections). Most recently, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, after both national and international condemnation and activism by feminist groups, granted Saudi women the vote and right to run for office for the first time in the 2015 local elections.
Suffrage movements
The suffrage movement was a broad one, made up of women and men with a wide range of views. In terms of diversity, the greatest achievement of the 20th-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 organization's motto.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott were the first two women in America to organize the women's rights convention in July 1848. Susan B. Anthony later joined the movement and helped form the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) in May 1869. Their goal was to change the 15th Amendment because it did not mention nor include women which is why the NWSA protested against it. Around the same time, there was also another group of women who supported the 15th amendment and they called themselves American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). The American Woman Suffrage Association was founded by Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe, and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who were more focused on gaining access at a local level. The two groups united became one and called themselves the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA).
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 in the United States, 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?"