Women's Suffrage

About this topic

Suffrage means the right to vote. In the 1800s women in most countries could not vote, hold office or often own property after marriage. The movement began organized in the United States at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, where Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott presented a Declaration of Sentiments modelled on the Declaration of Independence. Susan B. Anthony and Sojourner Truth were also leaders.

In Britain, Emmeline Pankhurst and the Women's Social and Political Union, the suffragettes, used militant tactics such as window smashing and hunger strikes, while suffragists like Millicent Fawcett used petitions and peaceful lobbying. New Zealand was the first self-governing country to give women the vote, in 1893. During World War I women's work in factories and hospitals strengthened the case; Britain gave limited votes to women over thirty in 1918, and the US passed the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920.

Other countries followed at different times: France in 1944, Switzerland in 1971 nationally. Many women of colour were still blocked by poll taxes and discrimination until the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Misconception: the vote was not freely granted but won after decades of campaigning. Example: Alice Paul led marches in Washington in 1913. It paved the way for later women's rights movements.