Women's suffrage

Women's suffrage is the right of women to vote in elections. Historically, women rarely had the right to vote, even in ostensibly democratic systems of government. The 19th century saw many movements advocating "universal suffrage", most notably in Europe and North America; following this, many movements for women's suffrage began to thrive, and by the mid and late 19th century, women's suffrage was accomplished in Australasia, then Europe, and then the Americas. By the middle of the 20th century, women's suffrage had been established as a norm of democratic governance. Extended political campaigns by women and their male supporters played an important role in changing public attitude, altering norms, and achieving legislation or constitutional amendments for women's suffrage.
The first wave of women's suffrage took place 1893–1930, covering English-speaking countries, Scandinavian states, and some other parts of Europe. The experience of the First World War has been characterized as an important factor in shifting public support for women's suffrage. The second wave, 1930-1970, covered nearly all Latin-American countries, much of Sub-Saharan Africa and some European laggards.
Pitcairn Island allowed women to vote for its councils in 1838. Several instances occurred in recent centuries where women were selectively given, then stripped of, the right to vote. In Sweden, conditional women's suffrage was in effect during the Age of Liberty, as well as in Revolutionary and early-independence New Jersey in the US. The Kingdom of Hawai'i, which originally had universal suffrage in 1840, rescinded this in 1852 and was subsequently annexed by the United States in 1898. In the years after 1869, a number of provinces held by the British and Russian empires conferred women's suffrage, and some of these became sovereign nations at a later point, like New Zealand, Australia, and Finland. Several states and territories of the United States, such as Wyoming and Utah, also granted women the right to vote. Women who owned property gained the right to vote in the Isle of Man in 1881, and in 1893, women in the then self-governing British colony of New Zealand were granted the right to vote. In Australia, the colony of South Australia granted women the right to vote and stand for parliament in 1895 while the Australian Federal Parliament conferred the right to vote and stand for election in 1902. Prior to independence, in the Russian Grand Duchy of Finland, women gained equal suffrage, with both the right to vote and to stand as candidates in 1906. National and international organizations formed to coordinate efforts towards women voting, especially the International Woman Suffrage Alliance.
Most major Western powers extended voting rights to women by the interwar period, including Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, Austria, the Netherlands and the United States. Notable exceptions in Europe were France, where women could not vote until 1944, Greece, and Switzerland.
In many countries, limited suffrage for women was granted before universal suffrage for men; for instance, literate women or property owners were granted suffrage before all men received it. The United Nations encouraged women's suffrage in the years following World War II, and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women identifies it as a basic right with 189 countries currently being parties to this convention.

History

Before the 19th century

In ancient Athens, often cited as the birthplace of democracy, only adult male citizens who owned land were permitted to vote. Through subsequent centuries, Europe was ruled by monarchs, though various forms of parliament arose at different times. The high rank ascribed to abbesses within the Catholic Church permitted some women the right to sit and vote at national assemblies – as with various high-ranking abbesses in Medieval Germany, who were ranked among the independent princes of the empire. Their Protestant successors enjoyed the same privilege almost into modern times.
Marie Guyart, a French nun who worked with the First Nations people of Canada during the 17th century, wrote in 1654 regarding the suffrage practices of Iroquois women: "These female chieftains... have a deciding vote in the councils. They make decisions there like their male counterparts, and it is they who even delegated as first ambassadors to discuss peace." The Iroquois, like many First Nations in North America, had a matrilineal kinship system. Property and descent were passed through the female line. Women elders voted on hereditary male chiefs and could depose them.
File:Catherine Helen Spence.jpg|thumb|South Australian suffragist Catherine Helen Spence stood for office in 1897. In a first for the modern world, South Australia granted women the right to stand for Parliament in 1895.|330x330px
File:Marie Stritt.jpg|thumb|Marie Stritt, German suffragist, co-founder of the International Alliance of Women|330x330px
The first independent country to introduce women's suffrage was arguably Sweden. In Sweden, conditional women's suffrage was in effect during the Age of Liberty.
In 1756, Lydia Taft became the first legal woman voter in colonial America. This occurred under British rule in the Massachusetts Colony. In a New England town meeting in Uxbridge, Massachusetts, she voted on at least three occasions. Unmarried white women who owned property could vote in New Jersey from 1776 to 1807.
In the 1792 elections in Sierra Leone, then a new British colony, all heads of household could vote and one-third were ethnic African women.
Before the 19th century, some countries granted women the right to vote partially or temporarily:

in Rome, in 1591, during the short pontificate of Pope Innocent IX, men and women over 14 years old had the right to vote;
in Sweden, between 1718 and 1771, major single or widowed women, owners, subject to tax and members of guilds are authorized to participate in local and national elections. These rights are annulled in 1758 for local elections and in 1772 for national elections. The right to vote in municipal elections is again granted to major single women, taxable and owners between 1862 and 1919;
the Republic of Corsica in 1755, and until its fall in 1769, implicitly grants the right to vote to single or widowed women ;
in France, under the Ancien Régime, women legally declared heads of family had the right to vote in municipal assemblies until 1789. From 1302 until 1789, noble women who owned fiefs and mother abbesses were summoned to the Estates General to elect their representatives. In the elections to the Estates General of 1789, members of religious communities were admitted to vote, as well as, for the Third Estate, heads of agricultural or business operations, and in the cities, members of trade bodies and communities. Women were then explicitly excluded from the electorate starting from the elections to the Legislative Assembly of 1791 and until 1945.

Territorial entities, subnational, non-state or not recognized, also preceded many countries:

the State of New Jersey from 1776 to 1807 under the condition, as for men, of being themselves owners;
Lower Canada, from 1791 and under the condition, as for men, of being themselves owners, restricted in 1834 and finally withdrawn after the Rebellions of 1837–1838, in 1849;
the Pitcairn Islands in 1838;
the Mormon State of Deseret ;
the province of Vélez from 1853 to its integration into the federal State of Santander in 1857;
the territory of Wyoming in 1869 with right to eligibility. A few months later in 1870, a woman is elected justice of the peace in Laramie, the same year in the same city another is elected court bailiff ;
the territory of Utah in 1870. A federal Congress act will suppress it in 1887;
the Isle of Man in 1881;
the territory of Washington in 1883, suppressed by the federal Supreme Court in 1887;
Wyoming as a state in 1890;
Colorado in 1893;
the Cook Islands in 1893;
South Australia from 1894. In 1895, South Australia becomes one of the first territories in the world to allow women to be candidates in legislative elections;
Utah and Idaho in 1896.

Other early instances of women's suffrage include the Corsican Republic, the Pitcairn Islands, the Isle of Man, and Franceville, but some of these operated only briefly as independent states and others were not clearly independent.
South Australian suffragist Catherine Helen Spence stood for office in 1897. In a first for the modern world, South Australia granted women the right to stand for Parliament in 1895.

19th century

The female descendants of the Bounty mutineers who lived on Pitcairn Islands could vote from 1838. This right was transferred after they resettled in 1856 to Norfolk Island.
The emergence of modern democracy generally began with male citizens obtaining the right to vote in advance of female citizens, except in the Kingdom of Hawai'i, where universal suffrage was introduced in 1840 without mention of sex; however, a constitutional amendment in 1852 rescinded female voting and put property qualifications on male voting.
The seed for the first Woman's Rights Convention in the United States in Seneca Falls, New York, was planted in 1840, when Elizabeth Cady Stanton met Lucretia Mott at the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London. The conference refused to seat Mott and other women delegates from the U.S. because of their sex. In 1851, Stanton met temperance worker Susan B. Anthony, and shortly the two would be joined in the long struggle to secure the vote for women in the U.S. In 1868 Anthony encouraged working women from the printing and sewing trades in New York, who were excluded from men's trade unions, to form Working Women's Associations. As a delegate to the National Labor Congress in 1868, Anthony persuaded the committee on female labor to call for votes for women and equal pay for equal work. The men at the conference deleted the reference to the vote. In the US, women in the Wyoming Territory were permitted to both vote and stand for office in 1869. Subsequent American suffrage groups often disagreed on tactics, with the National American Woman Suffrage Association arguing for a state-by-state campaign and the National Woman's Party focusing on an amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The 1840 constitution of the Kingdom of Hawaii established a House of Representatives, but did not specify who was eligible to participate in the election of it. Some academics have argued that this omission enabled women to vote in the first elections, in which votes were cast by means of signatures on petitions; but this interpretation remains controversial. The second constitution of 1852 specified that suffrage was restricted to males over twenty years-old.
In 1849, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, in Italy, was the first European state to have a law that provided for the vote of women, for administrative elections, taking up a tradition that was already informally sometimes present in Italy.
The 1853 Constitution of the province of Vélez in the Republic of New Granada, modern day Colombia, allowed for married women, or women older than the age of 21, the right to vote within the province. However, this law was subsequently annulled by the Supreme Court of the Republic, arguing that the citizens of the province could not have more rights than those already guaranteed to the citizens of the other provinces of the country, thus eliminating female suffrage from this province in 1856.
In 1881 the Isle of Man, an internally self-governing dependent territory of the British Crown, enfranchised women property owners. With this it provided the first action for women's suffrage within the British Isles.
The Pacific commune of Franceville, maintained independence from 1889 to 1890, becoming the first self-governing nation to adopt universal suffrage without distinction of sex or color, although only white males were permitted to hold office.
For countries that have their origins in self-governing colonies but later became independent nations in the 20th century, the Colony of New Zealand was the first to acknowledge women's right to vote in 1893, largely due to a movement led by Kate Sheppard. The British protectorate of Cook Islands rendered the same right in 1893 as well. Another British colony, South Australia, followed in 1895, enacting laws which not only extended voting to women, but also made women eligible to stand for election to its parliament.