Background

Suffrage means the right to vote in elections. It is an important part of modern political systems. Most nation-states that came out of the revolutions of the 1700s limited suffrage to small groups. Voting rights only expanded slowly over time. This is especially true for women, who most often had to fight hard for the right to vote.

The story of women’s suffrage has an unusual timeline. Women gained voting rights in a series of small victories around the world long before most nations allowed it. Some states, provinces and local areas started allowing women to vote in local elections. That gave more strength to the broader voting rights push. The fight in some areas lasted much longer than in others. It was also affected by race, class and age. The movement can’t be neatly outlined by time and place. That’s what makes the history of this movement so interesting.

Let’s tell the story with a journey around the globe. We’ll look at the when, where, who and how of suffrage movements around the world.

Region 1: New Zealand And Australia

In 2018, New Zealand celebrated the 125th anniversary of women’s suffrage. Women won the right to vote from the Electoral Act of 1893. It made New Zealand the first self-governing nation to award women the right to vote in national elections. This victory was largely due to the work of Kate Sheppard. She was an English woman who moved to the city of Christchurch on New Zealand’s South Island. She became the head of a group called the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in 1887. The group’s main focus was to stop people from drinking alcohol. Sheppard started with voting rights, though. She argued that women must first be allowed to vote if they were to make political change. She traveled across the country gathering women’s signatures demanding the right to vote. She presented the signatures to New Zealand lawmakers. They said no. She did not give up, though. By 1893 she had gathered the signatures of almost 32,000 women. This time, lawmakers passed the resolution. New Zealand’s women gained the right to vote. Women would have to wait until 1919 before they could run for elected offices, though.

Other local areas had given women the right to vote before 1893. New Zealand was the first to give all women¹ the right to vote at the national level, though. Neighboring Australia granted women the right to vote at the national level in 1902. At the time, Australia only allowed white women to vote. Aboriginal women² would have to wait another 60 years for suffrage.

Region 2: Europe

The next stop on our world tour is Europe. The publication of Mary Wollstonecraft’s “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” in 1792 was very important. Many historians see this writing as the starting point for women’s calls for equal rights. Her work was based on Enlightenment ideas of equal treatment and natural rights. Wollstonecraft supported the education of women. She wrote that society placed unequal burdens on men and women. The main burden for women was the lack of educational opportunities that kept them obedient to men.

Women’s suffrage in Europe began at the local level in 1862. That year, Sweden granted voting rights to rural widows and unmarried women. Married women still could not vote. Finland followed in 1872. It allowed women to vote only if they paid taxes. Other nations also allowed certain classes of women the right to vote in local elections. They included England, Wales and Scotland. Women would have to wait until the early 1900s before securing full voting rights across Europe.

The United Kingdom’s suffrage movement became well known. Supporters sometimes used violence to bring attention to their cause. It took more than 100 years of planning, protests, and arrests to win suffrage. Then in May 1929, it paid off. Lawmakers voted to allow all women over the age of 21 the right to vote. This gave women the same voting rights as men.

In France and Italy, women had to wait until the end of World War II for full suffrage. The women of Spain and Switzerland did not get the right to vote until 1971. Women in Liechtenstein had to wait until 1984. That’s 91 years later than New Zealand. We weren’t kidding when we said women’s suffrage has an unusual timeline.  

Region 3: Asia

Asia is a large continent with many different cultures. Let’s break it up into three parts for a closer look.

Central Asia

Many Marxists believed that women’s suffrage was needed in a socialist state. In fact, this right was granted toward the end of the Russian Revolution in 1917. Central Asian nations with ties to Russia did the same. Over the next 20 years, other nearby areas followed suit.

East and Southeast Asia

Nations in East and Southeast Asia gave women the right to vote at various times. Mongolia led the way in 1924 and Thailand soon followed. The official year for full suffrage in Thailand was 1932. Women in China had to work to change the existing system of government before the fight for suffrage could begin. The new draft constitution for the Republic of China was written in 1936. It included full women’s suffrage. Then came Japan’s 1937 attack, World War II, and the Communist Revolution. Women would have to wait until 1947 to actually use their voting rights.

Japanese women faced a similar fight. Full male suffrage was granted in 1925. In the following decades, Japan’s imperial conquests in Asia, and of course World War II, would overshadow the rights of women. Suffrage was finally granted to women at the end of 1945.

India was a British colony until 1947. Women in the United Kingdom were granted full voting rights in 1928. British colonies such as India were another story. Indian men only had limited suffrage under British rule. Both the British government and many Indian leaders fought against women’s suffrage. These men argued that women did not have the knowledge needed to vote. Once India gained its independence from Britain, things changed. The Constitution of India went into effect in 1950, with full women’s suffrage granted.

West Asia (also called the Middle East)

Women in the Middle East have fought the longest battle for suffrage and equal rights. Some majority Muslim nations extended suffrage rights from the 1950s to the 1970s. They include Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Iraq and Yemen. Other nations took much longer. In some cases, fighting took away rights that had been won. For example, the Taliban got rid of women’s suffrage in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. Women in Iraq gained the right to vote in 1958. They could not exercise that right, though, due to a sudden change of leaders. Oman and Qatar allowed women to vote in 1997 and 1999, respectively. In Bahrain it didn’t happen until 2002. The last country to extend voting rights to women was Saudi Arabia, in December of 2015.

Region 4: North America

North America’s suffrage movement was part of a larger call for social justice. Many women in the 1800s took to the streets for a number of issues beyond voting rights.

These issues included ending slavery and fighting for harsher alcohol laws. They also demanded changes to education and labor. Mary Wollstonecraft had a major impact on the American suffrage movement.

Both American and Canadian women won the right to vote in 1920. Women’s work for the war effort during World War I helped. It proved women were needed during a difficult time. Not all women were included, though. Indigenous women were granted United States citizenship along with Indigenous men in 1924. Rules at the state level meant that some men and women could not vote until 1948, though. In Canada, indigenous people did not get full voting rights until 1960. African American women in the U.S. won the right to vote in 1920. Many states still limited the voting rights of black men and women, though. Unfair rules were put in place to prevent most African Americans from voting. Those practices were finally stopped in the 1960s. Sadly, the struggle for voting rights continues. It has become a subject of disagreement as recently as the 2018 U.S. elections. Some argue that new rules have been made to deny minorities their voting rights.

Region 5: Latin America

In Mexico, Central and South America, feminist and suffrage movements were part of a bigger story. It happened in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The people in this region were fighting to form independent nation-states. Women in these areas first had to fight for freedom from colonial rule. They had to win the right to even have national elections. That’s why women’s suffrage in this area came later than in others.

Women’s suffrage came to Uruguay in 1927, Ecuador in 1929, and Chile in 1931. They were among the first newly independent nations to grant women both higher education and suffrage. Brazil and Cuba followed in 1943. Then came Guatemala and Venezuela in 1946 and Argentina in 1947. Chile and Costa Rica followed in 1949. Bolivia, Mexico, Colombia, Honduras, Nicaragua and Paraguay followed later. These countries did not extend suffrage to women until the 1950s and early 1960s.

Many women who fought for suffrage were from the upper classes of society. Often they had been educated in other countries. Most women in Latin America also had to fight another form of discrimination. Local culture and the Catholic Church expected women to fill certain roles within the family. As a result, women claimed suffrage would improve family life. They argued it would strengthen the government of their newly independent nations. Many women in Latin America took a more nationalistic and socialist view of equal treatment and rights. They focused on the rights of workers, the ills of capitalism, and the need for social changes. This contrasted with Western women’s focus on personal rights.

Region 6: Africa

Before imperialist nations colonized Africa, indigenous African women often held positions of power. Women’s and men’s roles in society were often viewed as supporting each other. Women were seen as spiritual leaders. Their political role was often limited, though. Many communities also practiced matrilineal descent.³

European powers then began carving up the continent, and it all changed. Men were given the power to act politically through indirect rule. In the early 1900s, women joined nationalist movements for independence. They protested colonial governments and demanded more rights for women.

African women called for full suffrage. First, though, they had to fight to create independent states. Once colonialism was ended, the right to vote was almost always extended to women at the same time as men. In South Africa, white women were given the right to vote much sooner than black women. This was due to a system of racial segregation called apartheid. Black women, therefore, did not get full suffrage until the end of apartheid in 1994. Two countries, Liberia and Ethiopia, kept their independence during colonialism. Even there, women were not allowed to vote until the mid-1950s.

Conclusion

The fight for women’s suffrage was not easy. Across societies, it was affected by differences in culture. Views on race and class also impacted different groups of women. In most nations, upper-class, educated women organized for voting rights first. They had time, money, and connections that working-class women did not. The history of women’s suffrage can seem pretty disconnected when you lay it out across time and place. The goal was the same across the world, though. Women must be allowed to participate in their governments if they are to gain equal rights. Today, social justice is focused on equal pay, health rights and education. These battles could only be fought once women gained the right to vote.

1 All women meaning there were no race or ethnic restrictions placed on women’s suffrage.
2 The word aboriginal can be a synonym for indigenous. However, it is also a proper noun describing people indigenous to Australia.
3 Matrilineal descent is the cultural practice of tracing kinship through the mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, etc.