When did women gain the right to vote in England?
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In the years before World War I, women in Norway (1913) also won the right to vote, as did women in the remaining Australian states. Denmark granted women's suffrage in 1915. Near the end of the war, Canada, Russia, Germany, and Poland also recognized women's right to vote. The Representation of the People Act 1918 saw British women over 30 gain the vote, Dutch women in 1919, and American women won the vote on 26 August 1920 with the passage of the 19th Amendment (the Voting Rights Act of 1965 secured voting rights for racial minorities). Irish women won the same voting rights as men in the Irish Free State constitution, 1922. In 1928, British women won suffrage on the same terms as men, that is, for persons 21 years old and older. Suffrage of Turkish women introduced in 1930 for local elections and in 1934 for national elections.
Women's suffrage
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England was one of the first places in the world to grant voting rights to women citizens universally and regardless of marital status, which it did by passage of the 1918 Representation of the People Act that gave voting rights to women aged 30 years and over who met a property qualification (equal voting rights with men was achieved a decade later under the Equal Franchise Act 1928, which permitted all women aged 21 and over to vote). Several centuries earlier, some of its colonies in North America, including New Jersey Colony by its constitution, had granted voting rights to women who could meet the same property requirements men had to meet; common laws of Coverture requiring a married woman's property to be held by her husband meant married women typically could not qualify.
Legal rights of women in history
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Finally in 1918, Parliament passed an act granting the vote to women over the age of 30 who were householders, the wives of householders, occupiers of property with an annual rent of £5, and graduates of British universities. About 8.4 million women gained the vote. In November 1918, the Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act 1918 was passed, allowing women to be elected into the House of Commons. By 1928 the consensus was that votes for women had been successful. With the Conservative Party in full control in 1928, it passed the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act that extended the voting franchise to all women over the age of 21, granting women the vote on the same terms as men, although one Conservative opponent of the bill warned that it risked splitting the party for years to come.
Women's suffrage in the United Kingdom
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The outbreak of the First World War in 1914 led to a suspension of all politics, including the militant suffragette campaigns. Lobbying did take place quietly. In 1918, a coalition government passed the Representation of the People Act 1918, enfranchising all men, as well as all women over the age of 30 who met minimum property qualifications. This act was the first to include practically all men in the political system and began the inclusion of women, extending the franchise by 5.6 million men and 8.4 million women. In 1928, the Conservative government passed the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act giving the vote to all women over the age of 21 on equal terms with men.
Women's suffrage in the United Kingdom
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By the mid 20th century, in some European countries, women still lacked some significant rights. Feminists in these countries continued to fight for voting rights. 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.
Feminists continued to campaign for the reform of family laws which gave husbands control over their wives. Although by the 20th century coverture had been abolished in the UK and the US, in many continental European countries married women still had very few rights. For instance, in France married women did not receive the right to work without their husband's permission until 1965. Feminists have also worked to abolish the "marital exemption" in rape laws which precluded the prosecution of husbands for the rape of their wives. Earlier efforts by first-wave feminists such as Voltairine de Cleyre, Victoria Woodhull and Elizabeth Clarke Wolstenholme Elmy to criminalize marital rape in the late 19th century had failed; this was only achieved a century later in most Western countries, but is still not achieved in many other parts of the world.
Feminism
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In Europe, the last countries to enact it 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.
Women in government
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Brown was a vocal supporter of women’s suffrage in the Washington Territory, one of the first territories in which women gained the right to vote through full enfranchisement in 1883. Brown wrote many letters to the editor of the "Daily Journal" in Walla Walla about the paper’s representation of women’s newly acquired right to vote. In 1887, a year before the Washington Territorial Supreme Court revoked women’s right to vote, the paper asserted that the Union did not want to force women to vote, but that many women, once they could vote, only voted in the first ballot out of curiosity and thereafter ceased to vote as the novelty of voting dissipated. Brown challenged this interpretation, writing that the Union did not force men to vote, so why would they force women to do so? He argued that while the Union did not believe in forcing women to vote, it did believe in forcing women to abstain from voting, and that the Union would continue to reinforce and perpetuate the legal barriers that kept women from voting.
Henry Brown (American clergyman)
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In 1888, Britain's first nationwide coalition of groups advocating women's right to vote, the National Society for Women's Suffrage (NSWS), split after a majority of members decided to accept organisations affiliated with political parties. Angry at this decision, some of the group's leaders, including Lydia Becker and Millicent Fawcett, stormed out of the meeting and created an alternative organisation committed to the "old rules," called the Great College Street Society after the location of its headquarters. Pankhurst aligned herself with the "new rules" group, which became known as the Parliament Street Society (PSS). Some members of the PSS favoured a piecemeal approach to gaining the vote. Because it was often assumed that married women did not need the vote since their husbands "voted for them," some PSS members felt that the vote for single women and widows was a practical step along the path to full suffrage. When the reluctance within the PSS to advocate on behalf of married women became clear, Pankhurst and her husband helped organise another new group dedicated to voting rights for all women – married and unmarried.
Emmeline Pankhurst
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France confirmed the electoral system of the former Ottoman Mount Lebanon province in setting up a Representative Council for Greater Lebanon in 1922. Two stage elections, universal adult male suffrage, and multimember multi-communal constituencies continued the situation that prevailed in Mount Lebanon up to 1914. Women in Lebanon gained suffrage in 1952, only five years after men did in the new Republic (in the year 1947). The Lebanese constitution — specifically Article 7, proclaimed that "All Lebanese are equal under the law, enjoying equally civil and political rights, and performing duties and public responsibility without any discrimination among them." This however did not protect against gender discrimination and thus women were not equally protected. Women were refused the right to vote by early Lebanese government until they organized and began petitioning for equal rights. In 1952 the Women's Political Rights Agreement came about and guaranteed that women would be able to vote. Women gained the right to vote but with a limitation, they had to have an elementary education. Women had to have documents that could prove that they had received at least an elementary level education. This limitation was lifted five years later in 1957 without much discourse or a fight.
Women in Lebanon
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Women actively participated in the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1905/06, which recognized all citizens as equal. The electoral law of 1906, however, denied women the right to vote. Women voted for the first time in the 1963 referendum on the White Revolution (reform introduced by Mohammad Reza Shah). The government did not allow women's participation in the 1963 vote, but they also did not deny them the right to set up their own ballots and vote. Women also voted in the September 1963 parliamentary elections. For the first time, six women were elected to parliament, and Shah appointed two other women to senate. The number of women deputies also increased in the following parliamentary elections. In 1978, on the eve of the Islamic Revolution, 22 women were in the parliament. Women retained the right to vote after the Islamic Revolution and four were elected to parliament under the Islamic Republic. In the 2000 Majlis elections, 13 women were elected to parliament. In the 1960s and 1970s, Farrukhru Parsa was elected as minister of education and Mahnaz Afkhami as minister of state for women's affairs. The position of minister of state for women's affairs was abolished in 1978. Today, Iranian women are still working to gain more rights in the political sphere.
Muslim women political leaders
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Following the referendum, amendments were made to the constitution to grant women the right to vote in national elections, although they did not gain the right to vote in local elections in three municipalities until 1986. The first national elections in which women could vote took place in 1986, and saw one woman elected to the Landtag on the Progressive Citizens' Party (FBP) list. In 1993 Cornelia Gassner of the FBP became the country's first female cabinet member.
1984 Liechtenstein women's suffrage referendum
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On the political front, her lifelong interest in economic and social conditions began in 1907 when she was one of the founders of the women's suffrage association "Landsforbundet for Kvinders Valgret", editing their journal "Kvindevalgret" (Women's Right to Vote) from 1908 to 1912. When women received the right to vote in municipal elections, in 1909 she was elected to the Citizens Representation for the Social Liberal Party. She proved to be a talented speaker, winning more votes than normal when she gained more votes than normal for the Social Liberal Party in Gentofte in 1918 when women were first permitted to stand for the Folketing.
Julie Arenholt