Africa Algeria Women's suffrage was in place in Algeria from 1962. Women's suffrage was introduced in Algeria by the French colonial authorities after a long struggle, and confirmed after Algeria became an independent nation in 1962. Women's suffrage was introduced in France in 1944. This right automatically included French women residing in French Algeria; but it did not include Muslim Algerian women, since indigenous Algerians was not governed by French law, but indigenous Islamic law. The advocates of women's suffrage raised the question of an extension of suffrage to Muslim women in Algeria to the French National Assembly in 1947; in September 1947 the Organic Statute was passed which granted citizenship to Muslim women in Algeria, but Article 4 of the statue gave the Algerian Assembly free choice to decide when to exercise and introduce that reform. When the UN created the
Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) the French UN-delegate
Marie-Hélène Lefaucheux worked to have France ratify it in order to force them to introduce suffrage in Algeria. She succeeded on 20 December 1952 when General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Political Rights of Women. After this, there was great pressure on France to introduce this reform in the Algerian colony. The French colonial authorities finally passed women's suffrage in 1958. Algeria became an independent nation in 1962, and the Algerian Constitution of 1962 confirmed the existing equal political rights to vote and be elected to all citizens.
Egypt The struggle for women's suffrage in Egypt first sparked from the nationalist
1919 Revolution in which women of all classes took to the streets in protest against the British occupation. The struggle was led by several
Egyptian women's rights pioneers in the first half of the 20th century through protest, journalism, and lobbying, and through women's organizations, primarily the
Egyptian Feminist Union (EFU). President
Gamal Abdel-Nasser consolidated women's suffrage in 1956 after they were denied the vote in elections for the Egyptian government under the British, who suppressed popular movement and interfered with democratic processes in parliament under the Egyptian monarchy.
Liberia In 1920, the women's movement organized in the
National Liberian Women's Social and Political Movement, who campaigned without success for women's suffrage, followed by the
Liberia Women's League and the
Liberian Women's Social and Political Movement, and in 1946, limited suffrage was finally introduced for women of the privileged Libero-American elite, and expanded to universal women's suffrage in 1951.
Libya In
Kingdom of Libya (1951–1969) the 1951 Constitution did secure women basic rights, since they were not excluded from the rights granted to all citizens under the constitution. A women's movement was organized by a minority of educated urban elite women who wished to secure women equal rights, starting with the first women's association in Benghazi 1955, followed by one in Tripoli in 1957. The municipal suffrage was granted in 1951.
Morocco Women's suffrage was introduced in Morocco in 1963. This right was however not enforced until 18 June 1963. The first woman was elected to Parliament in 1993, thirty years after women first participated in the election as voters.
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 campaign for women's suffrage was conducted largely by the
Women's Enfranchisement Association of the Union, which was founded in 1911. 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 white foreign nationals 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.
Tunisia Women's suffrage was introduced in Tunisia in 1957. The context of the introduction of women's suffrage in Tunisia was a part of a big reform program in women's rights. Tunisia became an independent nation in 1956 and saw a number of progressive reforms in favor of women's rights under the Secular President
Habib Bourguiba, whose Code of Personal Statue (CSP) replaced the Islamic
sharia law with a secular family law: raised the age of marriage, abolished arranged marriages and polygamy and introduced equal divorce law, as well as breaking Islamic sex segregation and encouraged women to appear unveiled. This progressive policy was completed by the introduction of women's suffrage the same year. Women were granted the right to vote in 1957, and became eligible for political office in 1959.
Asia Afghanistan at the
first presidential election (October 2004) in Afghan history. Women were granted suffrage in 1919 but elections were abolished in 1929. Women were again granted suffrage in 1964, and have been able to vote in
Afghanistan since 1965 (except during Taliban rule, 1996–2001, when no elections were held). In the 2014 election, Afghanistan's elected president pledged to bring women equal rights. In early 2021, there were 69 women elected as Members of Parliament in Afghanistan; however, after the
Fall of Kabul in late 2021, 60 of them fled the country. Legally, women are allowed to vote. However, there have been no government elections in the country since 2021, and all political parties have been banned since 2023.
Bahrain The
Bahrain formally introduced women's suffrage in 2002, when Article 1, Paragraph E, of the Constitution of the Kingdom of Bahrain, explicitly included women in the citizens eligible to vote.
Bangladesh Bangladesh was (mostly) the province of Bengal in
British India until 1947 when 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.
China The fight for women's suffrage in
China was organized when
Tang Qunying founded the women's suffrage organization
Nüzi chanzheng tongmenghui, to ensure that women's suffrage would be included in the first Constitution drafted after the abolition of the
Chinese monarchy in 1911–1912. A short but intense period of campaigning was ended with failure in 1914. In the following period, local governments in China introduced women's suffrage in their own territories, such as
Hunan and
Guangdong in 1921 and
Sichuan in 1923. Women's suffrage was included by the
Kuomintang Government in the Constitution of 1936, but because of the war, the reform could not be enacted until after the war and was finally introduced in 1947. 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). 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.
Iran Women's suffrage had been expressly excluded in the Iranian Constitution of 1906 and a women's rights movement had been organized, which supported women's suffrage. In 1942, the
Women's party of Iran (Ḥezb-e zanān-e Īrān) was founded to work to introduce the reform, and in 1944, the women's group of the
Tudeh Party of Iran, the
Democratic Organization of Iranian Women (Jāmeʿa-ye demokrāt-e zanān) put forward a suggestion of women's suffrage in the Parliament, which was however blocked by the Islamic conservatives. In 1956, a new campaign for women's suffrage was launched by the
New Path Society (Jamʿīyat-e rāh-e now), the Association of Women Lawyers (Anjoman-e zanān-e ḥoqūqdān) and the League of Women Supporters of Human Rights (Jamʿīyat-e zanān-e ṭarafdār-e ḥoqūq-e bašar).
King Faysal himself had supported women's suffrage during his prior short tenure as king in Syria. Feminists such as
Mary Wazir and
Paulina Hasun raised the issue in the 1920s. When the Constituent Assembly of Iraq was inaugurated in 1924, Paulina Hassun appealed to the Assembly that women should not be excluded from political participation in the new nation, and one of the members, Amjad al-Umari, unsuccessfully proposed that the word "male" be erased from the Electoral Law to include women in it. The Women's suffrage reform was primarily supported by the opposition parties, notably the
Iraq Communist Party. During the 1930s, the Communist ICP and the leftist al-Ahali supported women's suffrage. The monarchy was careful to avoid alienating conservative and religious circles, who considered women's suffrage as incompatible with the "nature" of women, the proper social order and gender hierarchies, and women's suffrage was not given refused serious consideration. In the 1950s the Iraqi Women's Union petitioned senior state figures including the prime minister and wrote articles in the press. The
Baathist Party supported women's rights by principle, though it initially focused in expanding women's educational and professional rights rather than their political rights. However, while women's rights progressed in other aspects, the political rights was delayed. The regime was unstable and saw four regime changes in the 1960s.
Israel Women have had full suffrage since the
establishment of the
State of Israel in 1948. In 1920, the
Union of Hebrew Women for Equal Rights in Erez Israel launched a campaign that women's suffrage and equal rights for women should be included in the Jewish Authority of the British
Palestina Mandate; in 1926, the Jewish Authority granted women's suffrage to the Jewish Authority, and declared that women would be given equal right to vote in the future Jewish State, a promise that was fulfilled upon the foundation of Israel in 1947, followed by equal rights being included in the Constitution of 1951. The first (and only) woman to be elected
Prime Minister of Israel was
Golda Meir in 1969.
Japan Although women were allowed to vote in some prefectures in 1880, women's suffrage was enacted at a national level in 1945 with the end of the world war. The campaign for women's suffrage started in 1923, when the women's umbrella organization
Tokyo Rengo Fujinkai was founded and created several sub groups to address different women's issues, one of whom,
Fusen Kakutoku Domei (FKD), was to work for the introduction of women's suffrage and political rights. The campaign was gradually reduced due to difficulties in the 1930s fascist era; the FKD was banned after the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese war, and women's suffrage could not be introduced until it was incorporated in the new constitution after the war.
Jordan The
Arab Women's Federation under
Emily Bisharat worked for the introduction of women's suffrage in Jordan in the 1950s.
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 The women's movement organized in Lebanon with the creation of the
Syrian-Lebanese Women's Union in 1924; it split into the Women's Union under
Ibtihaj Qaddoura and the
Lebanese Women Solidarity Association under
Laure Thabet in 1946. The women's movement united again when the two biggest women's organizations, the
Lebanese Women's Union and the
Christian Women's Solidarity Association created the
Lebanese Council of Women in 1952 to campaign for women's suffrage, a task that finally succeeded, after an intense campaign.
Oman After the
1970 Omani coup d'état, women's position in society was being reassessed in connection to the national modernization program, and many reforms in women's rights was introduced alongside the establishment of the state feminist
Omani Women's Association. The modernization in women's rights in Oman was followed by municipal suffrage in Muscat in 1994 (with the first two women elected to the local Shura the same year), municipal suffrage in all Oman in 1996, and national suffrage in 2002.
Philippines signing the Women's Suffrage Bill following the 1937 plebiscite. The Philippines was one of the first countries in Asia to grant women the right to vote. The women's movement organized in the early 20th-century in organizations such as the
Asociacion Feminista Filipina (1904) the
Society for the Advancement of Women (SAW) and the
Asociaction Feminist Ilonga, who campaigned for women's suffrage and other rights for gender equality. Suffrage for
Filipinas was achieved following an all-female,
special plebiscite held on April 30, 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. 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". 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. In 1920, the feminist
Mary Ajami presented a petition to the Syrian Congress of 1920 during the
Faisal-Government, but the subject was postphoned and forgotten after the fall of the Faisal regime. In the 1930s and 1940s, the
Arab Women's Union of Damascus presented a women's suffrage petition to President
Hashim al-Atassi and to President
Shukri al-Quwatli, as well as directly to the Parliament. When the influential feminist
Adila Bayhum gave her support to
Husni al-Za'im, he promised her to introduce women's suffrage when he came to power in 1949, and the reform was finally introduced in 1953.
Sri Lanka In 1931,
Sri Lanka (at that time Ceylon) became 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 women's movement organized on Sri Lanka under the
Ceylon Women's Union in 1904, and from 1925, the
Mallika Kulangana Samitiya and then the
Women's Franchise Union (WFU) campaigned successfully for the introduction of women's suffrage, which was achieved in 1931. The zenith of this favourable condition to women has been the 1960 July General Elections, in which Ceylon elected the world's first female prime minister,
Sirimavo Bandaranaike. She became 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 be elected president, and the first female executive president.
Thailand The Ministry of Interior's Local Administrative Act of May 1897 (Phraraachabanyat 1897 [BE 2440]) granted municipal suffrage in the election of village leader to all villagers "whose house or houseboat was located in that village," and explicitly included women voters who met the qualifications. This was a part of the far-reaching administrative reforms enacted by King
Chulalongkorn (r. 1868–1919), in his efforts to protect Thai sovereignty. This reform was enacted without any prior activism in favor of women's suffrage and was followed by a number of reforms in women's rights, and it has been suggested that the reform was part of an effort by
Pridi Bhanomyong to put Thailand on equal political terms with modern Western powers and establish diplomatic recognition by those as a modern nation.
Yemen Historically Yemen was divided in two nations prior to its unification in 1990, both of whom already had women's suffrage prior to the unification. The history of women's suffrage is therefore split. Women's suffrage was granted in
South Yemen in 1967. The reform was a part of a number of reforms introduced in women's rights under Socialist rule. When the
People's Democratic Republic of Yemen was founded as an independent nation under the Socialist NLF Party in 1967, the
General Union of Yemeni Women was founded as a part of the regime's policy. The purpose of the GUYW was to enforce the official women's policy of the People's Democratic Republic regime, which was a radical and ambitions
state feminism. Women's suffrage was granted in North Yemen in 1970. The Northern
Yemen Arab Republic was a deeply conservative state with sharia law and no strong women's movement, were no reforms in women's rights were not prioritised during the Yemen civil war of 1962–1970. However, the Second Permanent Constitution of 1970 stated that "all citizens are equal before the law"; and while this phrase did not explicitly include women, women voters used this phrase to vote in the next election, which was held in 1983.
Europe ,
Croatian Spring participant; Europe's first female prime minister In Europe, the first two countries to enact women's suffrage were Finland in 1906 and Denmark in 1913, and the last two were
Switzerland and
Liechtenstein. In Switzerland, women gained the
right to vote in federal
elections in 1971; but in the canton of
Appenzell Innerrhoden women obtained the right to vote on local issues only in 1991, when the canton was forced to do so by the
Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland. In Liechtenstein, women were given the right to vote by the
women's suffrage referendum of 1984. Three prior referendums held in
1968,
1971 and
1973 had failed to secure women's right to vote.
Albania Albania introduced a limited and conditional form of women's suffrage in 1920, and subsequently provided full voting rights in 1945.
Andorra The Principality of Andorra introduced women's suffrage in 1970 (third last in Europe), though Andorra did not have a democratic constitution until 1993. In 1969, 3708 signatures demanding women's suffrage and eligibility was presented to the Andorra Council Parliament. In April 1970, women's suffrage was introduced after a vote with 10 votes for and eight against, while however eligibility was voted down. Women's eligibility was introduced on 5 September 1973.
Azerbaijan Universal voting rights were recognized in Azerbaijan in 1918 by the
Azerbaijan Democratic Republic. This early commitment to women's rights was part of a broader movement towards secularization and modernization in the country.
Belgium , Belgian suffragist, 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). Belgian socialists opposed the women's suffrage, fearing their conservative leanings and their "domination" by the clergy. This happened on March 27, 1948. In Belgium, voting is compulsory.
Bulgaria Bulgaria left Ottoman rule in 1878. Although the first adopted constitution, the
Tarnovo Constitution (1879), gave women equal election rights, in fact women were disenfranchised, 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 had limited success. In
1937 married women received right to vote at the local ecections. In
1938 all women above 21 years received that right for parliamentary elections, but they still could not be elected neither as MPs nor as local councelors. It was only after the
Second World War that women received the right to be elected, and in
1945 the first 16 female MPs were elected in the
National Assembly.
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. The Declaration of Independence of the Czechoslovak Nation from October 18, 1918, declared that "our democracy shall rest on universal suffrage. Women shall be placed on equal footing with men, politically, socially, and culturally," and women were appointed to the Revolutionary National Assembly (parliament) on November 13, 1918. On June 15, 1919, women voted in local elections for the first time. Women were guaranteed equal voting rights by the
constitution of the Czechoslovak Republic in February 1920 and were able to vote for the parliament for the first time in
April 1920.
Cyprus Cyprus had no organized women's movement until the mid-20th century and no activism in favor of women's suffrage, which was introduced in the new constitution of 1961 after the liberation from Britain, simply because women's suffrage had at that point came to be regarded as a given thing in international democratic standard.
Denmark 's large group portrait painting ''From the Early Days of the Fight for Women's Suffrage'' (1897) 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).
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 to 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 had been 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 conditional suffrage was granted to tax-paying female members of
guilds. However, this right was controversial. In
Vaasa, there was opposition against women participating in the town hall discussing political issues, as this was not seen as their right place, and women's suffrage appears to have been opposed in practice in some parts of the realm: when
Anna Elisabeth Baer and two other women petitioned to vote in Turku in 1771, they were not allowed to do so by town officials. 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 countryside, and in 1872, the same reform was implemented in the cities. In 1906, Finland became the first province in the world to implement racially-equal women's suffrage, unlike Australia in 1902. Finland also elected the world's first female members of parliament
the following year.
Miina Sillanpää became Finland's first female government minister in 1926.
France The April 21, 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 April 29, 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 July 3, 1958, decree. Although several countries had started extending suffrage to women from the end of the 19th century, France was one of the last countries to do so in Europe. In fact, the
Napoleonic Code declares the legal and political incapacity of women, which blocked attempts to give women political rights. First feminist claims started emerging during the French Revolution in 1789.
Condorcet expressed his support for women's right to vote in an article published in
Journal de la Société de 1789, but his project failed. On 17 January 1913,
Marie Denizard was the first woman to stand as a candidate in a French
presidential election but the state refused to acknowledge her. After
World War I, French women continued demanding political rights, and despite the
Chamber of Deputies being in favor, the
Senate continuously refused to analyze the law proposal.
Germany Women were granted the right to vote and be elected from November 12, 1918. The
Weimar Constitution established a "new" Germany after the
end of World War I and extended the right to vote to all citizens above the age of 20, with some exceptions. The proposal garnered a narrow majority of those present when it was first proposed, but failed to get the broad 80% support needed to add it to the constitution. On a national level 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.
Eleni Skoura, again from
Thessaloniki, became the first woman elected to the
Hellenic Parliament in 1953, with the conservative
Greek Rally, when she won a by-election against another female opponent. Women were finally able to participate in the
1956 election, with two more women becoming members of parliament;
Lina Tsaldari, wife of former Prime Minister
Panagis Tsaldaris, won the most votes of any candidate in the country and became the first female minister in Greece under the conservative
National Radical Union government of
Konstantinos Karamanlis. Promises of equal rights from the Proclamation were embraced in the Constitution in 1922, the year Irish women achieved full voting rights. However, over the next ten years, laws were introduced that eliminated women's rights from serving on juries, working after marriage, and working in industry. The 1937 Constitution and Taoiseach
Éamon de Valera’s conservative leadership further stripped women of their previously granted rights. As well, though the 1937 Constitution guarantees women the right to vote and to nationality and citizenship on an equal basis with men, it also contains a provision, Article 41.2, which states:
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 on a local or municipal level by
Benito Mussolini's government in 1925. In April 1945, the provisional government led by the
Italian Resistance decreed the universal enfranchisement of women in Italy, 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
Allied occupation. The new version of
article 51 Constitution recognizes equal opportunities in electoral lists.
Liechtenstein : ''See also
Women's suffrage in Liechtenstein'' In
Liechtenstein, women's suffrage was granted via
referendum in 1984.
Luxembourg In Luxembourg,
Marguerite Thomas-Clement spoke in favour of women suffrage in public debate through articles in the press in 1917–19; however, there was never any organized women suffrage movement in Luxembourg, as women suffrage was included without debate in the new democratic constitution of 1919.
Malta Malta was a British colony, but when women's suffrage was finally introduced in Great Britain in 1918, this had not been included in the 1921 Constitution on Malta, when Malta was given its own parliament, although the
Labour Party did support the reform. In 1931,
Mabel Strickland, assistant secretary of Constitution Party, delivered a petition signed by 428 to the Royal Commission on Maltese Affairs requesting women's suffrage without success. – but was introduced as a part of the new Constitution, alongside Parliamentarism, an independent court system and a number of other legal and political reforms.
Netherlands , a Dutch pioneer for women's rights, is portrayed by
Truus Claes in 1917 on the occasion of her seventieth birthday. Women were granted the right to vote in the
Netherlands on August 9, 1919.
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 November 28, 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, 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. 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 to the
Senate and not to the
Chamber of Deputies (Article 4 (c)). 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
Romanian 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, From 1976, during the
Spanish transition to democracy women fully exercised the right to vote and be elected to office.
Sweden (1672–1737); as a taxpaying property owner, and a woman of legal majority due to her widowed status, she belonged to the women granted suffrage in accordance with the constitution of the
Age of Liberty (1718–1772). During the
Age of Liberty (1718–1772), Sweden had conditional women's suffrage. 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. In 1823, a suggestion was raised by the mayor of Strängnäs to reintroduce women's suffrage for taxpaying women of legal majority (unmarried, divorced and widowed women) in the mayoral elections, and this right was reintroduced in 1858. 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 for women's suffrage among women. In 1888, the
temperance activist
Emilie Rathou became the first woman in Sweden to demand the right for women's suffrage in a public speech. In 1899, a delegation from the
Fredrika Bremer Association presented a suggestion of women's 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, supported by the
Social Democratic women's Clubs. 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 also include married women. The same year, women were granted eligibility for election to municipal councils, The right to vote in national elections was not returned to women until 1919, and was practiced again in the election of 1921, for the first time in 150 years.
Switzerland A
referendum on women's suffrage was held on February 1, 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. 2020 and 2024, the country was presided by a woman.
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.
Tansu Çiller served as the 22nd prime minister of Turkey and the first female prime minister of Turkey from 1993 to 1996. She was elected to the parliament in 1991 general elections and she became prime minister on June 25, 1993, when her cabinet was approved by the parliament.
United Kingdom s refused to eat in prison was the first woman elected to the British
House of Commons in 1918, but as an
Irish nationalist she did not take her seat, instead joining the
First Dáil. In 1919 she was appointed
Minister for Labour, the first female minister in a democratic
government cabinet. 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, women lost the right to vote under the
Municipal Corporations Act 1835. Unmarried 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 women were registered to vote in local government elections in England. 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. 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 pay their fine, they were sent to prison for one week, and three days. 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 February 6, 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 women were to achieve the vote in 1895.
The Womanhood Suffrage League of New South Wales was founded in Sydney in 1891. Women became eligible to vote for the
Parliament of South Australia in 1895, as were Aboriginal men and women. 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 non-indigenous women to vote and stand for election to the Federal Parliament. The following year
Nellie Martel,
Mary Moore-Bentley,
Vida Goldstein, and
Selina Siggins stood for election.
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 September 19, 1893 made the self-governing British colony the first country 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
Jacinda Ardern),
Governor-General (
Catherine Tizard,
Patsy Reddy,
Cindy Kiro and
Silvia Cartwright),
Chief Justice (
Sian Elias and
Helen Winkelmann),
Speaker of the House of Representatives (
Margaret Wilson), and from March 3, 2005, to August 23, 2006, all four of these posts were held by women, along with
Queen Elizabeth as
Head of State.
Pitcairn and Norfolk Islands The female descendants of the
Bounty mutineers who lived on Pitcairn Island could vote for their local councils from 1838, and this right transferred with their resettlement to
Norfolk Island (now an
Australian external territory) in 1856.
The Americas Women in Central and South America, and in Mexico, lagged behind those in Canada and the United States in gaining the vote. The first South American country to enfranchise women in national elections was Ecuador in 1929 and the last was Paraguay in 1961. By date of full suffrage: • 1918: Canada • 1920: United States • 1929: Ecuador • 1932: Uruguay • 1934: Brazil, Cuba • 1939: El Salvador • 1941: Panama • 1946: Guatemala, Venezuela • 1947: Argentina • 1948: Suriname • 1949: Chile, Costa Rica • 1950: Haiti • 1952: Bolivia • 1953: Mexico • 1954: Belize, Colombia • 1955: Honduras, Nicaragua, Peru, • 1961: Paraguay 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 Aguerri (Nicaragua),
Elida Campodónico (Panama),
Clara González (Panama),
Gumercinda Páez (Panama),
Paulina Luisi Janicki (Uruguay),
Carmen Clemente Travieso, (Venezuela).
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 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. voting at the hospital in 1951. It was the first time women had been permitted to vote in national elections in Argentina. To this end Eva Perón received the Civic Book No. 00.000.001. It was the first and only time she would vote; she died July 26, 1952, after developing cervical cancer. In an official statement on national television, Eva Perón announced the extension of suffrage to Argentina's women: On September 23, 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.
The Bahamas In 1951, a women's committee, the
Women's Suffrage Movement (WSM), was formed under the leadership of
Mary Ingraham who collected over 500 signatures in favor of women's suffrage and turned in a petition to the
Parliament of the Bahamas. In 1958, the
National Women's Council was founded by
Doris Sands Johnson with
Erma Grant Smith as president; the organization was given the support of the
Progressive Liberal Party (PLP), and when the
United Bahamian Party (UBP) finally gave its support after long resistance, women's suffrage could finally be passed in parliament in 1960. Women's suffrage was finally introduced in the reform bill of 1954, when full male suffrage was also introduced.
Bermuda (or the Somers Isles) As
Bermuda (or the Somers Isles) is part of the British Realm, the British Government is the responsible government and the British Parliament has complete authority to legislate for the territory, but certain competencies of local governance have been delegated to a local government since a local legislature, including an elected
lower house, was introduced in 1620. Voting for this local assembly, however, was long restricted to property-holding men (the property qualification had not originally applied, having been introduced to limit the number of coloured men, as well as poorer white men, who could vote). In 1918,
Gladys Morrell held a public speech in favor of women's suffrage, and in 1923 the women's movement organized in the
Bermuda Woman's Suffrage Society chaired by
Rose Gosling to campaigned for women's suffrage. Women's suffrage was finally introduced in 1944. The same property qualification that applied to men also applied to women until universal adult suffrage was introduced in the 1960s. This suffrage specifically concerned voting for the local Parliament of the
British Overseas Territory. Although having the same right to vote in British elections as other British nationals (in Bermuda's case, these rights were guaranteed in Royal Charters of 1607 and 1615: "
all and euery persons being our subjects which shall goe and inhabite within the said Somer Ilandes and every of their children and posterity which shall happen to bee borne within the limits thereof shall haue and enjoy all libertyes franchesies and immunities of free denizens and natural subjectes within any of our dominions to all intents and purposes, as if they had beene abiding and borne within this our Kingdome of England or in any other of our Dominions"), Bermudian women (and female and male British nationals from British Overseas Territories more generally) remain effectively barred from voting for the national British Parliament as no seats have been provided for the territories.
Bolivia In Bolivia, the first women's organization in the country, the
Ateneo Femenino, was active for the introduction of women's suffrage from the 1920s. Municipal women's suffrage and granted in 1947, and full suffrage in 1952.
Brazil ,
Rio Grande do Norte, 1928 In Brazil, the issue was lifted foremost by the organization
Federação Brasileira pelo Progresso Feminino from 1922. The struggle for women's suffrage was part of a larger movement to gain rights for women. Most of the suffragists consisted of a minority of women from the educated elite, which made the activism appear less threatening to the political male elite. The law of
Rio Grande do Norte State allowed women to vote in 1926. Women were granted the right to vote and be elected in Electoral Code of 1932, followed by Brazilian Constitution of 1934.
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 May 24, 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". The first woman elected to Parliament was
Agnes Macphail in Ontario in 1921.
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. The vote was finally introduced in 1954.
Costa Rica The campaign for women's suffrage in begun in the 1910s, and the campaigns were active during all electoral reforms in 1913, 1913, 1925, 1927 and 1946, notably by the
Feminist League (1923), which was a part of the
International League of Iberian and Hispanic-American Women, who had a continuing campaign between 1925 and 1945. Women obtained the legal right to vote in parliamentary and presidential elections in 1949.
Ecuador Women obtained the legal right to vote in parliamentary and presidential elections in 1929. This was the first time in South America.
El Salvador Between June 1921 and January 1922, when El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Costa Rica formed a (second)
Federation of Central America, the Constitution of this state included women's suffrage on 9 September 1921, but the reform could never be implemented because the Federation (and thereby its constitution) did not last. and the campaign was given support by the
People's Progressive Party (PPP) and its women's group
Women's Progressive Organization (WPO), until full women's suffrage was introduced in connection to the new reformed constitution in 1953.
Honduras Between June 1921 and January 1922, when El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Costa Rica formed a (second)
Federation of Central America, the Constitution of this state included women's suffrage on 9 September 1921, but the reform could never be implemented because the Federation (and thereby its constitution) did not last. The women's suffrage – as was male suffrage at the time – was, however, limited to a minority of women, and during the 1930s, women campaigned for universal women's suffrage via the
Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) the
Jamaica Women's League (JWL) and the
Women's Liberal Club (1936), until full suffrage was finally introduced in 1944.
Mexico Women gained the right to vote in 1947 for some local elections and for national elections in 1953, coming after a struggle dating to the 19th century.
Nicaragua A women's movement was organized in Nicaragua in the 1920s. Their demand for women's suffrage was supported by the
Nationalist Liberal Party, who allied themselves with the women's movement in order to get their support during their regime. The Nationalist Liberal Party promised to introduce the reform of women's suffrage, and in 1939, the leader of the Nicaraguan women's movement
Josefa Toledo (leader of the Nicaragua branch of the
International League of Iberian and Latin American Women) demanded that the regime fulfil their promise to the women's movement.
Peru Women's suffrage in Peru was first introduced on communal level in 1932, and on national level on 7 September 1955. Peru was the second to last country in South America to introduce women's suffrage.
United States , Washington, D.C., March 3, 1913. The parade was organized by suffragists
Alice Paul and
Lucy Burns. Long 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. While many consider suffrage to include both voting rights and officeholding rights, many women were able to hold office prior to receiving voting rights.
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 or
anti-cannibalism 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. 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) 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. 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 Emeline 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. , women suffragists picketing in front of the White House . Banner on the left reads, "Mr President, How long must women wait for Liberty?", and the banner to the right, "Mr President, What will you do for women's suffrage?" 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 were from 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. When women's suffrage was introduced in the US in 1920, the suffragists on Puerto Rico stated that this reform should apply to Puerto Rico as well, and sued under the leadership of
Milagros Benet de Mewton for this purpose. Women's suffrage was extended to Puerto Rico in 1929, but only for literate women; full women's suffrage was introduced by the US on Puerto Rico first in 1932. .
Uruguay Women's suffrage was announced as a principle in the
Constitution of Uruguay of 1917, and declared as law in a decree of 1932. The first national election in which women voted was the
1938 Uruguayan general election.
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 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.
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. == In religion ==