Women's suffrage facts for kids

Women's suffrage

Thirteen of the total of nineteen female members of parliament. These were the first female MPs in the world, elected in Finland's parliamentary elections in 1907.

Anna II, Abbess of Quedlinburg. In the pre-modern era, abbesses could vote in some European national assemblies, because of their rank in the Catholic and Protestant churches.

Women's suffrage is the right of women to vote and to be elected to an office. The right has generally been given after long political campaigns. In many countries, it was recognised before universal suffrage. Before the late 19th century, no woman had the right to vote in any political election.

The modern movement for women to gain the right to vote started in France in the late-18th century. The French Republic had been founded after a revolution, and political scientist Antoine Condorcet and activist Olympe de Gouges campaigned for women to be allowed to vote in the national election.

In early cases of women's suffrage, only those women who met certain requirements were given the right to vote in certain kinds of elections. In Sweden, there was conditional women's suffrage during the Age of Liberty (1718–1771). Unmarried women who owned property could vote in New Jersey from 1776 to 1807. In the 1792 election in Sierra Leone, all heads of household—one-third of whom were women—could vote.

Several British colonies recognised women's suffrage before most countries. The female descendants of the Bounty mutineers who lived on Pitcairn Islands could vote from 1838. This right was kept when they were resettled on Norfolk Island in 1856. Women in South Australia allowed to vote in local elections from 1861, and those on the Isle of Man could vote in parliamentary elections from 1881. In 1893, New Zealand became the first independent country to give all adult women the right to vote in national elections. The women in South Australia got the same right in 1894, and became the first to get the right to stand (run) for seats in parliament.

Many countries did the same soon after, following similar battles. Limited voting rights were also gained by women in several Western countries in the late 19th century, including Sweden, Finland and the United Kingdom. Russian Empire was the first European country to introduce women's suffrage, in 1906. It also elected the world's first female members of parliament in its 1907 elections. At that time it was a part of the Russian Empire. In the years before World War I, women in Norway (1913) and Denmark (1915) also won the right to vote, as did women in the other Australian states. In most other Western countries, women's suffrage came at the end of World War I.

Ceylon, now called Sri Lanka, recognised the right in 1931. It elected the world's first female head of government, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, in the country's 1960 elections. Women's suffrage was explicitly recognised as a right by the United Nations in 1979.

Related pages

Suffragette

Images for kids

The 1913 Woman Suffrage Procession in Washington, D.C., was initiated and organized by suffrage leader Alice Paul
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.
French pro-suffrage poster, 1934
Women voting in Kabul at the first presidential election (October 2004) in Afghan history
Philippine President Manuel L. Quezon signing the Women's Suffrage Bill following the 1937 plebiscite
Jane Brigode, Belgian suffragist, around 1910
Line luplau seen in the foreground on her daughter Marie Luplau's large group portrait painting From the Early Days of the Fight for Women's Suffrage (1897).
Wilhelmina Drucker, a Dutch pioneer for women's rights, is portrayed by Truus Claes in 1917 on the occasion of her seventieth birthday.
The first Norwegian woman voter casts her ballot in the 1910 municipal election.
A 1917 demonstration in Petrograd. The plaque says (in Russian): "Without the participation of women, election is not universal!"
Women exercising the right to vote during the Second Spanish Republic, November 5, 1933
The Swedish writer Maria Gustava Gyllenstierna (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).
Swedish suffragist Signe Bergman, around 1910
Women's suffrage demonstration in Gothenburg, June 1918
Eighteen female MPs joined the Turkish Parliament in 1935
A British cartoon speculating on why imprisoned suffragettes refused to eat in prison
Australian women's rights were lampooned in this 1887 Melbourne Punch cartoon: A hypothetical female member foists her baby's care on the House Speaker. South Australian women were to achieve the vote in 1895.
Edith Cowan (1861–1932) was elected to the Western Australian Legislative Assembly in 1921 and was the first woman elected to any Australian Parliament (though women in Australia had already had the vote for two decades).
Women's demonstration in Buenos Aires in front of the National Congress by law for universal suffrage, 1947
First women electors of Brazil, Rio Grande do Norte, 1928.
Program for Woman Suffrage Procession, Washington, D.C., March 3, 1913
Toledo Woman Suffrage Association, Toledo, Ohio, 1912
The Silent Sentinels, women suffragists picketing in front of the White House circa February 1917. 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?"