List of suffragists and suffragettes


This list of suffragists and suffragettes includes noted individuals active in the worldwide women's suffrage movement who have campaigned or strongly advocated for women's suffrage, the organisations which they formed or joined, and the [|publications] which publicized – and, in some nations, continue to publicize– their goals. Suffragists and suffragettes, often members of different groups and societies, used or use differing tactics. Australians called themselves "suffragists" during the nineteenth century while the term "suffragette" was adopted in the earlier twentieth century by some British groups after it was coined as a dismissive term in a newspaper article. "Suffragette" in the British or Australian usage can sometimes denote a more "militant" type of campaigner, while suffragists in the United States organized such nonviolent events as the Suffrage Hikes, the Woman Suffrage Procession of 1913, the Silent Sentinels, and the Selma to Montgomery march. US and Australian activists most often preferred to be called suffragists, though both terms were occasionally used.

Africa

Egypt

  • Regina Khayatt – educator, philanthropist, feminist, suffragist, and temperance worker; co-founder of the Egyptian Feminist Union
  • Saiza Nabarawi – journalist and attendee of the 9th Conference of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance
  • Doria Shafik – feminist, poet and editor who went on an eight-day hunger strike at Egypt's press syndicate in protest of the creation of a constitutional committee without any women
  • Huda Sha'arawi – feminist, activist, nationalist, revolutionary, co-founder of the EFU

    Kenya

  • Isabel Abraham Ross – suffragist and campaigner with the East Africa Women's League

    Nigeria

  • Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti – educator and activist who fought for women's enfranchisement and political representation
  • Gambo Sawaba - widely regarded as the pioneer of fighting for the liberation of northern women
  • Tanimowo Ogunlesi - co-founder of the National Council of Women's Societies
  • Wuraola Esan - educator and advocate for women in traditional and legislative spaces

    South Africa

  • Annie Botha – political hostess, wife of the first Prime Minister of South Africa and suffragist, co-founder of the South African Women's Federation
  • Zainunnisa Gool – lawyer and civil rights activist, and after white women only were granted the vote in 1930, founder of the League for the Enfranchisement of Non-European Women in 1938
  • Anna Petronella van Heerden – campaigned for women's suffrage in the 1920s and the first Afrikaner woman to qualify as a medical doctor
  • Mary Emma Macintosh – suffragist and the first President of the Women's Enfranchisement Association of the Union
  • Mabel Malherbe – suffragist and politician, first woman mayor of Pretoria and first woman to be a member of the South African Parliament
  • Charlotte Maxeke – religious leader, suffragist and the first black South African woman to graduate from a university, founded the Bantu Women’s League
  • Jessie Rose-Innes – nurse, social campaigner and suffragist of British descent, elected chair of the Cape Town branch of the National Council for Women
  • Olive Schreiner – writer, suffragist and co-founder of the Cape Women's Enfranchisement League, left the Women's Enfranchisement League when they refused to support the vote for black African women
  • Jessie M. Soga – singer, music teacher and suffragist
  • Julia Solly – British-born South African feminist, temperance activist and suffragist who co-founded Cape Women's Enfranchisement League and helped acquire the vote for white women only in 1930
  • Daisy Solomon – suffragist who campaigned in South Africa and Britain, daughter of Georgiana Solomon
  • Emilie Solomon – suffragist and president of the Cape Woman's Christian Temperance Union, niece of Georgiana Solomon
  • Georgiana Solomon – Scottish-born educator and suffragist, co-founder of the South African Women's Federation
  • Lady Barbara Steel – suffragist and member of the Women's Enfranchisement Association of the Union, helped acquire the vote for white women only in 1930

    Asia

China