Women's suffrage

Women's suffrage is the right of women to vote in elections. 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 (1718–1772), as well as in Revolutionary and early-independence New Jersey (1776–1807) in the US.Karlsson Sjögren, Åsa, ''Männen, kvinnorna och rösträtten: medborgarskap och representation 1723–1866'' en, women, and suffrage: citizenship and representation 1723–1866 Carlsson, Stockholm, 2006 (in Swedish).

Pitcairn Island allowed women to vote for its councils in 1838. The Kingdom of Hawai'i, which originally had universal suffrage in 1840, rescinded this in 1852 and was subsequently annexed by the United States in 1898.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 (1869) and Utah (1870), 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 (although it allowed for the exclusion of "aboriginal natives"). 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.Brief history of the Finnish Parliament
eduskunta.fi. National and international organizations formed to coordinate efforts towards women voting, especially the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (founded in 1904 in Berlin, Germany).

Most major Western powers extended voting rights to women by the interwar period, including Canada (1917), Germany (1918), the United Kingdom (1918 for women over 30 who met certain property requirements, 1928 for all women), Austria, the Netherlands (1919) and the United States (1920). Notable exceptions in Europe were France, where women could not vote until 1944, Greece (equal voting rights for women did not exist there until 1952, although, since 1930, literate women were able to vote in local elections), and Switzerland (where, since 1971, women could vote at the federal level, and between 1959 and 1990, women got the right to vote at the local canton level). The last European jurisdictions to give women the right to vote were Liechtenstein in 1984 and the Swiss canton of Appenzell Innerrhoden at the local level in 1990, with the Vatican City being an absolute elective monarchy (the electorate of the Holy See, the conclave, is composed of male cardinals, rather than Vatican citizens). In some cases of direct democracy, such as Swiss cantons governed by '' Landsgemeinden'', objections to expanding the suffrage claimed that logistical limitations, and the absence of secret ballot, made it impractical as well as unnecessary; others, such as Appenzell Ausserrhoden, instead abolished the system altogether for both women and men.

Leslie Hume argues that the First World War changed the popular mood:

The women's contribution to the war effort challenged the notion of women's physical and mental inferiority and made it more difficult to maintain that women were, both by constitution and temperament, unfit to vote. If women could work in munitions factories, it seemed both ungrateful and illogical to deny them a place in the voting booth. But the vote was much more than simply a reward for war work; the point was that women's participation in the war helped to dispel the fears that surrounded women's entry into the public arena.

Pre-WWI opponents of women's suffrage such as the Women's National Anti-Suffrage League cited women's relative inexperience in military affairs. They claimed that since women were the majority of the population, women should vote in local elections, but due to a lack of experience in military affairs, they asserted that it would be dangerous to allow them to vote in national elections.

Extended political campaigns by women and their supporters were necessary to gain legislation or constitutional amendments for women's suffrage. 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 (1979) 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 are women of standing amongst the savages, and they 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.

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 (1718–1772).

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.

Other early instances of women's suffrage include the Corsican Republic (1755), the Pitcairn Islands (1838), the Isle of Man (1881), and Franceville (1889–1890), but some of these operated only briefly as independent states and others were not clearly independent.

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 (now an Australian external territory).

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.see facsimile at 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 (now Port Vila, Vanuatu), 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.

20th century

Following the federation of the British colonies in Australia in 1901, the new federal government enacted the Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902 which allowed female British subjects to vote and stand for election on the same terms as men. However, many indigenous Australians remained excluded from voting federally until 1962.

The first place in Europe to introduce women's suffrage was the Grand Duchy of Finland in 1906, and it also became the first place in continental Europe to implement racially-equal suffrage for women. As a result of the 1907 parliamentary elections, Finland's voters elected 19 women as the first female members of a representative parliament. This was one of many self-governing actions in the Russian autonomous province that led to conflict with the Russian governor of Finland, ultimately leading to the creation of the Finnish nation in 1917.

In the years before World War I, women in Norway also won the right to vote. During WWI, Denmark, Russia, Germany, and Poland also recognized women's right to vote.

Canada gave right to vote to some women in 1917; women getting vote on same basis as men in 1920, that is, men and women of certain races or status being excluded from voting until 1960, when universal adult suffrage was achieved.

The Representation of the People Act 1918 saw British women over 30 gain the vote. Dutch women won the passive vote (allowed to run for parliament) after a revision of the Dutch Constitution in 1917 and the active vote (electing representatives) in 1919, and American women on August 26, 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 ages 21 and older. The suffrage of Turkish women was introduced in 1930 for local elections and in 1934 for national elections.

By the time French women were granted the suffrage in July 1944 by Charles de Gaulle's government in exile, by a vote of 51 for, 16 against, France had been for about a decade the only Western country that did not at least allow women's suffrage at municipal elections.

Voting rights for women were introduced into international law by the United Nations' Human Rights Commission, whose elected chair was Eleanor Roosevelt. In 1948 the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; Article 21 stated: "(1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives. (3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures."

The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Political Rights of Women, which went into force in 1954, enshrining the equal rights of women to vote, hold office, and access public services as set out by national laws.

21st century

One of the most recent jurisdictions to acknowledge women's full right to vote was Bhutan in 2008 (its first national elections). Most recently, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, after both national and international condemnation and activism by feminist groups, granted Saudi women the vote and right to run for office for the first time in the 2015 local elections.

Suffrage movements

The suffrage movement was a broad one, made up of women and men with a wide range of views. In terms of diversity, the greatest achievement of the 20th-century woman suffrage movement was its extremely broad class base. One major division, especially in Britain, was between suffragists, who sought to create change constitutionally, and suffragettes, led by English political activist Emmeline Pankhurst, who in 1903 formed the more militant Women's Social and Political Union. Pankhurst would not be satisfied with anything but action on the question of women's enfranchisement, with "deeds, not words" the organization's motto.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott were the first two women in America to organize the women's rights convention in July 1848. Susan B. Anthony later joined the movement and helped form the National Woman's Suffrage Association (NWSA) in May 1869. Their goal was to change the 15th Amendment because it did not mention nor include women which is why the NWSA protested against it. Around the same time, there was also another group of women who supported the 15th amendment and they called themselves American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). The American Women Suffrage Association was founded by Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe, and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who were more focused on gaining access at a local level. The two groups united became one and called themselves the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA).

Throughout the world, the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), which was established in the United States in 1873, campaigned for women's suffrage, in addition to ameliorating the condition of prostitutes. Under the leadership of Frances Willard, "the WCTU became the largest women's organization of its day and is now the oldest continuing women's organization in the United States."

There was also a diversity of views on a "woman's place". Suffragist themes often included the notions that women were naturally kinder and more concerned about children and the elderly. As Kraditor shows, it was often assumed that women voters would have a civilizing effect on politics, opposing domestic violence, liquor, and emphasizing cleanliness and community. An opposing theme, Kraditor argues, held that women had the same moral standards. They should be equal in every way and that there was no such thing as a woman's "natural role".

For Black women in the United States, achieving suffrage was a way to counter the disfranchisement of the men of their race.Dubois, Dumneil 2012, p. 475. Despite this discouragement, black suffragists continued to insist on their equal political rights. Starting in the 1890s, African American women began to assert their political rights aggressively from within their own clubs and suffrage societies. "If white American women, with all their natural and acquired advantages, need the ballot," argued Adella Hunt Logan of Tuskegee, Alabama, "how much more do black Americans, male and female, need the strong defense of a vote to help secure their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?"

Explanations for suffrage extensions

Scholars have proposed different theories for variations in the timing of women's suffrage across countries. These explanations include the activism of social movements, cultural diffusion and normative change, the electoral calculations of political parties, and the occurrence of major wars. According to Adam Przeworski, women's suffrage tends to be extended in the aftermath of major wars.

Impact

Scholars have linked women's suffrage to subsequent economic growth, the rise of the welfare state, and less interstate conflict.

Timeline

By continent

Africa

Algeria

Women's suffrage was in place in Algeria from 1962.

Women's suffrage was introduced in Algeria by the French colonial authorities after a long struggle, and confirmed after Algeria became an independent nation in 1962.
Women's suffrage was introduced in France in 1944. This right automatically included French women residing in French Algeria; but it did not include Muslim Algerian women, since indigenous Algerians was not governed by French law, but indigenous Islamic law.

The advocates of women's suffrage raised the question of an extension of suffrage to Muslim women in Algeria to the French National Assembly
in 1947;Maamri, M. R. (2015). The State of Algeria: The Politics of a Post-Colonial Legacy. Storbritannien: Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 113 in September 1947 the Organic Statute was passed which granted citizenship to Muslim women in Algeria, but Article 4 of the statue gave the Algerian Assembly free choice to decide when to exercise and introduce that reform.
In 1949 the Justrabo Proposal put forvard in the Algerian Assembly suggested to extend suffrage to educated Muslim women, which was a very small minority, but the suggestion did not pass.

When the UN created the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) the French UN-delegate
Marie-Hélène Lefaucheux worked to have France ratify it in order to force them to introduce suffrage in Algeria.
She succeeded on 20 December 1952 when General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Political Rights of Women.
After this, there was great pressure on France to introduce this reform in the Algerian colony. The French colonial authorities finally passed women's suffrage in 1958.

Algeria became an independent nation in 1962, and the Algerian Constitution of 1962 confirmed the existing equal political rights to vote and be elected to all citizens.

Egypt

The struggle for women's suffrage in Egypt first sparked from the nationalist 1919 Revolution in which women of all classes took to the streets in protest against the British occupation. The struggle was led by several Egyptian women's rights pioneers in the first half of the 20th century through protest, journalism, and lobbying, and through women's organizations, primarily the Egyptian Feminist Union (EFU). President Gamal Abdel-Nasser consolidated women's suffrage in 1956 after they were denied the vote in elections for the Egyptian government under the British, who suppressed popular movement and interfered with democratic processes in parliament under the Egyptian monarchy.

Liberia

In 1920, the women's movement organized in the National Liberian Women's Social and Political Movement, who campaigned without success for women's suffrage, followed by the Liberia Women's League and the Liberian Women's Social and Political Movement, and in 1946, limited suffrage was finally introduced for women of the privileged Libero-American elite, and expanded to universal women's suffrage in 1951.

Libya

In Kingdom of Libya (1951–1969) the 1951 Constitution did secure women basic rights, since they were not excluded from the rights granted to all citizens under the constitution. A women's movement was organized by a minority of educated urban elite women who wished to secure women equal rights, starting with the first women's association in Benghazi 1955, followed by bone in Tripoli in 1957.

The municial suffrage was granted in 1951. The Constitution of 1963 extended the suffrage to women.

Morocco

Women's suffrage was introduced in Morocco in 1963.

The right to vote was technically granted for both the local and national levels on 1 September 1959. This right was however not enforced until 18 June 1963.

The first woman was elected to Parliament in 1993, thirty years after women first participated in the election as voters.

Sierra Leone

One of the first occasions when women were able to vote was in the elections of the Nova Scotian settlers at Freetown. In the 1792 elections, all heads of household could vote and one-third were ethnic African women.
Women won the right to vote in Sierra Leone in 1930.

South Africa

The campaign for women's suffrage was conducted largely by the Women's Enfranchisement Association of the Union, which was founded in 1911.

The franchise was extended to white women 21 years or older by the Women's Enfranchisement Act, 1930. The first general election at which women could vote was the 1933 election. At that election Leila Reitz (wife of Deneys Reitz) was elected as the first female MP, representing Parktown for the South African Party. The limited voting rights available to non-white men in the Cape Province and Natal ( Transvaal and the Orange Free State practically denied all non-whites the right to vote, and had also done so to white foreign nationals when independent in the 1800s) were not extended to women, and were themselves progressively eliminated between 1936 and 1968.

The right to vote for the Transkei Legislative Assembly, established in 1963 for the Transkei bantustan, was granted to all adult citizens of the Transkei, including women. Similar provision was made for the Legislative Assemblies created for other bantustans. All adult coloured citizens were eligible to vote for the Coloured Persons Representative Council, which was established in 1968 with limited legislative powers; the council was however abolished in 1980. Similarly, all adult Indian citizens were eligible to vote for the South African Indian Council in 1981. In 1984 the Tricameral Parliament was established, and the right to vote for the House of Representatives and House of Delegates was granted to all adult Coloured and Indian citizens, respectively.

In 1994 the bantustans and the Tricameral Parliament were abolished and the right to vote for the National Assembly was granted to all adult citizens.

Southern Rhodesia

Southern Rhodesian white women won the vote in 1919 and Ethel Tawse Jollie (1875–1950) was elected to the Southern Rhodesia legislature 1920–1928, the first woman to sit in any national Commonwealth Parliament outside Westminster. The influx of women settlers from Britain proved a decisive factor in the 1922 referendum that rejected annexation by a South Africa increasingly under the sway of traditionalist Afrikaner Nationalists in favor of Rhodesian Home Rule or "responsible government". Black Rhodesian males qualified for the vote in 1923 (based only upon property, assets, income, and literacy). It is unclear when the first black woman qualified for the vote.

Tunisia

Women's suffrage was introduced in Tunisia in 1957.

The context of the introduction of women's suffrage in Tunisia was a part of a big reform program in women's rights. Tunisia became an independent nation in 1956 and saw a number of progressive reforms in favor of women's rights under the Secular President Habib Bourguiba, whose Code of Personal Statue (CSP) replaced the Islamic sharia law with a secular family law: raised the age of marriage, abolished arranged marriages and polygamy and introduced equal divorce law, as well as breaking Islamic sex segregation and encouraged women to appear unveiled. This progressive policy was completed by the introduction of women's suffrage the same year.
Women were granted the right to vote in 1957, and became eligible for political office in 1959.

Asia

Afghanistan

Women were granted suffrage in 1919 but elections were abolished in 1929. Women were again granted suffrage in 1964, and have been able to vote in Afghanistan since 1965 (except during Taliban rule, 1996–2001, when no elections were held). , women have been casting fewer ballots in part due to being unaware of their voting rights. In the 2014 election, Afghanistan's elected president pledged to bring women equal rights.

In early 2021, there were 69 women elected as Members of Parliament in Afghanistan; however, after the Fall of Kabul in late 2021, 60 of them fled the country. Legally, women are allowed to vote. However, there have been no government elections in the country since 2021, and all political parties have been banned since 2023.

Bahrain

The Bahrain formally introduced women's suffrage in 2002, when Article 1, Paragraph E, of the Constitution of the Kingdom of Bahrain, explicitly included women in the citizens eligible to vote.

Bangladesh

Bangladesh was (mostly) the province of Bengal in British India until 1947 when it became part of Pakistan. It became an independent nation in 1971. Women have had equal suffrage since 1947, and they have reserved seats in parliament. Bangladesh is notable in that since 1991, two women, namely Sheikh Hasina and Begum Khaleda Zia, have served terms as the country's Prime Minister continuously. Women have traditionally played a minimal role in politics beyond the anomaly of the two leaders; few used to run against men; few have been ministers. Recently, however, women have become more active in politics, with several prominent ministerial posts given to women and women participating in national, district and municipal elections against men and winning on several occasions. Choudhury and Hasanuzzaman argue that the strong patriarchal traditions of Bangladesh explain why women are so reluctant to stand up in politics.

China

The fight for women's suffrage in China was organized when Tang Qunying founded the women's suffrage organization Nüzi chanzheng tongmenghui, to ensure that women's suffrage would be included in the first Constitution drafted after the abolition of the Chinese monarchy in 1911–1912. A short but intense period of campaigning was ended with failure in 1914.

In the following period, local governments in China introduced women's suffrage in their own territories, such as Hunan and Guangdong in 1921 and Sichuan in 1923.

Women's suffrage was included by the Kuomintang Government in the Constitution of 1936, but because of the war, the reform could not be enacted until after the war and was finally introduced in 1947.

India

Women in India were allowed to vote right from the first general elections after the independence of India in 1947 unlike during the British rule who resisted allowing women to vote. The Women's Indian Association (WIA) was founded in 1917. It sought votes for women and the right to hold legislative office on the same basis as men. These positions were endorsed by the main political groupings, the Indian National Congress. British and Indian feminists combined in 1918 to publish a magazine ''Stri Dharma'' that featured international news from a feminist perspective. In 1919 in the Montagu–Chelmsford Reforms, the British set up provincial legislatures which had the power to grant women's suffrage. Madras in 1921 granted votes to wealthy and educated women, under the same terms that applied to men. The other provinces followed, but not the princely states (which did not have votes for men either, being monarchies). In Bengal province, the provincial assembly rejected it in 1921 but Southard shows an intense campaign produced victory in 1921. Success in Bengal depended on middle class Indian women, who emerged from a fast-growing urban elite. The women leaders in Bengal linked their crusade to a moderate nationalist agenda, by showing how they could participate more fully in nation-building by having voting power. They carefully avoided attacking traditional gender roles by arguing that traditions could coexist with political modernization.

Whereas wealthy and educated women in Madras were granted voting right in 1921, in Punjab the Sikhs granted women equal voting rights in 1925, irrespective of their educational qualifications or being wealthy or poor. This happened when the Gurdwara Act of 1925 was approved. The original draft of the Gurdwara Act sent by the British to the Sharomani Gurdwara Prabhandak Committee (SGPC) did not include Sikh women, but the Sikhs inserted the clause without the women having to ask for it. Equality of women with men is enshrined in the Guru Granth Sahib, the sacred scripture of the Sikh faith.

In the Government of India Act 1935 the British Raj set up a system of separate electorates and separate seats for women. Most women's leaders opposed segregated electorates and demanded adult franchise. In 1931 the Congress promised universal adult franchise when it came to power. It enacted equal voting rights for both men and women in 1947.

Indonesia

Indonesia granted women voting rights for municipal councils in 1905. Only men who could read and write could vote, which excluded many non-European males. At the time, the literacy rate for males was 11% and for females 2%. The main group that pressed for women's suffrage in Indonesia was the Dutch Vereeninging voor Vrouwenkiesrecht (VVV-Women's Suffrage Association), founded in the Netherlands in 1894. VVV tried to attract Indonesian members, but had very limited success because the leaders of the organization had little skill in relating to even the educated class of Indonesians. When they eventually did connect somewhat with women, they failed to sympathize with them and ended up alienating many well-educated Indonesians. In 1918, the first national representative body, the Volksraad, was formed which still excluded women from voting. Indigenous women did not organize until the Perikatan Perempuan Indonesia (PPI, Indonesian Women Association) in 1928. In 1935, the colonial administration used its power of nomination to appoint a European woman to the Volksraad. In 1938, women gained the right to be elected to urban representative institutions, which led to some Indonesian and European women entering municipal councils. Eventually, only European women and municipal councils could vote, excluding all other women and local councils. In September 1941, the Volksraad extended the vote to women of all races. Finally, in November 1941, the right to vote for municipal councils was granted to all women on a similar basis to men (subject to property and educational qualifications).

Iran

Women's suffrage had been expressly excluded in the Iranian Constitution of 1906 and a women's rights movement had been organized, which supported women's suffrage.

In 1942, the Women's party of Iran (Ḥezb-e zanān-e Īrān) was founded to work to introduce the reform, and in 1944, the women's group of the Tudeh Party of Iran, the Democratic Society of Women (Jāmeʿa-ye demokrāt-e zanān) put forward a suggestion of women's suffrage in the Parliament, which was however blocked by the Islamic conservatives.Hamideh Sedghi
“Feminist Movements iii. In the Pahlavi Period,”
Encyclopædia Iranica, IX/5, pp. 492–498. In 1956, a new campaign for women's suffrage was launched by the New Path Society (Jamʿīyat-e rāh-e now), the Association of Women Lawyers (Anjoman-e zanān-e ḥoqūqdān) and the League of Women Supporters of Human Rights (Jamʿīyat-e zanān-e ṭarafdār-e ḥoqūq-e bašar).

After this, the reform was actively supported by the Shah and included as a part of his modernization program, the White Revolution. A referendum in January 1963 overwhelmingly approved by voters gave women the right to vote, a right previously denied to them under the Iranian Constitution of 1906 pursuant to Chapter 2, Article 3.

Iraq

Full women's suffrage was introduced in Iraq in 1980.

The campaign for women's suffrage started in the 1920s. The women's movement in Iraq organized in 1923 with the ''Nahda al-Nisa'' ( Women's Awakening Club), led by Asma al-Zahawi and with elite women such as Naima a-Said, and Fakhriyya al-Askari among their members.Zuhur, S. (2006). Iraq, Women's Empowerment, and Public Policy. US: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College. pp. 12–13
King Faysal himself had supported women's suffrage during his prior short tenure as king in Syria.
Feminists such as Mary Wazir and Paulina Hasun raised the issue in the 1920s.
Paulina Hassan published the first Iraqi women's magazine, ''Layla'', in 1923–1925, followed by a number of women's magazines in the 1930s and 1940s that voiced feminist demands.
When the Constituent Assembly of Iraq was inaugurated in 1924, Paulina Hassun appealed to the Assembly that women should not be excluded from political participation in the new nation, and one of the members, Amjad al-Umari, unsuccessfully proposed that the word "male" be erased from the Electoral Law to include women in it.Efrati, N. (2012). Women in Iraq: Past Meets Present. Tyskland: Columbia University Press.

The Women's suffrage reform was primarily supported by the opposition parties, notably the Iraq Communist Party.Al-Tamimi, H. (2019). Women and Democracy in Iraq: Gender, Politics and Nation-Building. Indien: Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 21
During the 1930s, the Communist ICP and the leftist al-Ahali supported women's suffrage.
Even those supporting the reform, however, often did so with the reservation that woman should reach a higher level of education before they were ready for it.

The Iraqi monarchy prioritized foreign policy rather than internal issues and showed little enthusiasm to address the issue of women's suffrage.
The monarchy was careful to avoid alienating conservative and religious circles, who considered women's suffrage as incompatible with the "nature" of women, the proper social order and gender hierarchies, and women's suffrage was not given refused serious consideration.
Both the Sunni and Shia clergy rejected women's suffrage as being in opposition to the natural roles of gender, as the "joke of the day", an attack on the law of nature and the proper way of life, since women were the weaker sex and "lesser persons" similar to children.
When women's suffrage in Syria was introduced in 1949, MP Farhan al-Irs of al-Amara commented: "Women are shameful. How could they possibly sit with men?"

In 1951 a motion to include women in the Electoral Law was rejected in the Chamber of Deputies.
During the discussion to change the electoral law to include women's suffrage in March–April 1951, the MP Abd al-Abbas of Diwaniyya opposed suffrage as this would contradict Islamic sex segregation, as elected women MP would then sit among male MPs in the Chamber of Deputies: "Is this not forbidden? Are we not all of Islam?"

An electoral decree in December 1952 provided direct elections but did not include women.
A Sunni scholar published an article in the paper al-Sijill in October 1952 named "The Crime of Equality Between Men and Women": as an imam and khatib of the mosques of Baghdad and scholar of the al-Azhar University, he stated that women's suffrage was a plot against Islam and contrary to Quranic verses which delineated gender hierarchies that made women in politics incompatible.

A number of women's organization was founded in the 1940s and 1950s that campaigned for women's rights including suffrage, notably the Iraqi Union for Women's Rights (1952).
Naziha al-Dulaimi of the League for Defence of Women's Rights ( Iraqi Women's League), which gathered 42,000 members, campaigned for gender equality (including suffrage), organized educational programs, provided social services, established 78 literacy centers, and drafted the 1959 Personal Status Law, which was accepted and introduced by the Government.
In the 1950s the Iraqi Women's Union petitioned senior state figures including the prime minister and wrote articles in the press.

A Week of Women's Rights was launched in October 1953 by Iraqi Women's Union suffrage, who arranged a sumposium and voiced their demand in radio programs and articles in the press to campaigned for women's suffrage.
As a response, the Islamic clergy launched a Week of Virtue and called for a general strike against women's suffrage and called for women to "stay at home" since women's suffrage was against Islam.
During the Week of Virtue, the Sunni Nihal al-Zahawi, daughter of Amjad al-Zahawi, head of the Muslim Sisters Society (Jamiyyat al-Aukht al-Muslima), spoke on the radio against women's suffrage: she described the suffragists as women who revolted against the very Islam that gave them rights, and that women's suffrage was lamentable since it broke sex segregation and resulted in gender mixing, which was an unrestricted liberty that broke the rules of against Islam.

A breakthrough came in 1958. During the Arab Union of Iraq-Jordan, the Iraqi Constitution was set, in March 1958, to be amended to include women's suffrage later that year, but the matter became moot when the monarchy was abolished in July that year.
An unnamed MP to the newspaper al-Hawadith that he could never run against a female candidate, since if he lost he would have lost to a woman, which would have been dishonorable, and if he won, he would only have won over a woman; he claimed many male MPs felt the same, and that voters would also feel dishonored by being represented and ruled by a woman.
The MP Tawfq al-Mukhtar commented to a reporter: "Friends, women's rights bother me a lot, and anybody who condemns or criticizes them gives me great pleasure"; he added that he would withdraw if he was put against a female candidate, and he was one of four MPs to vote against the proposed amendment of March 1958.

In 1958 the Iraqi Monarchy was replaced by the Baathis regime. The early Baathist regime saw women's emancipation in many aspects, with urban liberal modernist women enjoying professional and educational equality and appearing unveiled.Al-Tamimi, H. (2019). Women and Democracy in Iraq: Gender, Politics and Nation-Building. Indien: Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 23
The Baathist Party supported women's rights by principle, though it initially focused in expanding women's educational and professional rights rather than their political rights.
Article 19 of the Iraqi Provisional Constitution of 1970 granted all Iraqi citizens equal before the law regardless of sex, blood, language, social origin or religion, and the state women's umbrella organization General Foundation of Iraqi Women (GFIW) of 1972 guaranteed women's full equal rights in the professional and educational sphere, prevented all discrimination and recognized women's political participation in principle.
However, while women's rights progressed in other aspects, the political rights was delayed. The regime was unstable and saw four regime changes in the 1960s.

In 1980 full suffrage was granted and women were given the right to vote and be elected to political office.
The suffrage reform was granted when the new Iraq National Assembly was formed before the 1980s Elections, and 16 of 250 seats where filled by women.

Israel

Women have had full suffrage since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.

In 1920, the Union of Hebrew Women for Equal Rights in Erez Israel launched a campaign that women's suffrage and equal rights for women should be included in the Jewish Authority of the British Palestina Mandate; in 1926, the Jewish Authority granted women's suffrage to the Jewish Authority, and declared that women would be given equal right to vote in the future Jewish State, a promise that was fullfilled upon the foundation of Israel in 1947, followed by equal rights being included in the Constitution of 1951.

The first (and only) woman to be elected Prime Minister of Israel was Golda Meir in 1969.

Japan

Although women were allowed to vote in some prefectures in 1880, women's suffrage was enacted at a national level in 1945 with the end of the world war.

The campaign for women's suffrage started in 1923, when the women's umbrella organization Tokyo Rengo Fujinkai was founded and created several sub groups to address different women's issues, one of whom, Fusen Kakutoku Domei (FKD), was to work for the introduction of women's suffrage and political rights. The campaign was gradually reduced due to difficulties in the 1930s fascist era; the FKD was banned after the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese war, and women's suffrage could not be introduced until it was incorporated in the new constitution after the war.

Jordan

The Arab Women's Federation under Emily Bisharat worked for the introduction of women's suffrage in Jordan in the 1950s.

Suffrage were given to educated women in 1955, but the Federation continued to campaign for universal suffrage for women, collecting the thumb prints as signatures from illiterate women in support for women's suffrage.
Universal women's suffrage was finally granted in 1974. However, since no elections was held in Jordan until 1989, women's suffrage was not enforced until that year.

Korea

South Korean people, including South Korean women, were universally granted the vote in 1948.

Kuwait

When voting was first introduced in Kuwait in 1985, Kuwaiti women had the right to vote. The right was later removed. In May 2005, the Kuwaiti parliament re-granted female suffrage.

Lebanon

The women's movement organized in Lebanon with the creation of the Syrian-Lebanese Women's Union in 1924; it split into the Women's Union under Ibtihaj Qaddoura and the Lebanese Women Solidarity Association under Laure Thabet in 1946. The women's movement united again when the two biggest women's organizations, the Lebanese Women's Union and the Christian Women's Solidarity Association created the Lebanese Council of Women in 1952 to campaign for women's suffrage, a task that finally succeeded, after an intense campaign.

Oman

After the 1970 Omani coup d'état, women's position in society was being reassessed in connection to the national modernization program, and many reforms in women's rights was introduced alongside the establishment of the state feminist Omani Women's Association.

The modernization in women's rights in Oman was followed by municipal suffrage in Muscat in 1994 (with the first two women elected to the local Shura the same year), municipal suffrage in all Oman in 1996, and national suffrage in 2002.

Pakistan

The provinces that now constitute Pakistan were a part of northwest British India until 1947, when the partition of India occurred. Women received full suffrage in 1947. Muslim women leaders from all classes actively supported the Pakistan movement in the mid-1940s. Their movement was led by wives and other relatives of leading politicians. Women were sometimes organized into large-scale public demonstrations.
In November 1988, Benazir Bhutto became the first Muslim woman to be elected as prime minister of a Muslim country.

Philippines

The Philippines was one of the first countries in Asia to grant women the right to vote.
The women's movement organized in the early 20th-century in organizations such as the Asociacion Feminista Filipina (1904) the Society for the Advancement of Women (SAW) and the Asociaction Feminist Ilonga, who campaigned for women's suffrage and other rights for gender equality.
Suffrage for Filipinas was achieved following an all-female, special plebiscite held on April 30, 1937. 447,725 – some ninety percent – voted in favour of women's suffrage against 44,307 who voted no. In compliance with the 1935 Constitution, the National Assembly passed a law which extended the right of suffrage to women, which remains to this day.

Qatar

Qatar formally introduced women's suffrage in 1997.

Saudi Arabia

In late September 2011, King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al-Saud declared that women would be able to vote and run for office starting in 2015. That applies to the municipal councils, which are the kingdom's only semi-elected bodies. Half of the seats on municipal councils are elective, and the councils have few powers. The council elections have been held since 2005 (the first time they were held before that was the 1960s). Saudi women did first vote and first run for office in December 2015, for those councils. Salma bint Hizab al-Oteibi became the first elected female politician in Saudi Arabia in December 2015, when she won a seat on the council in Madrakah in Mecca province. In all, the December 2015 election in Saudi Arabia resulted in twenty women being elected to municipal councils.

The king declared in 2011 that women would be eligible to be appointed to the Shura Council, an unelected body that issues advisory opinions on national policy. This is great news," said Saudi writer and women's rights activist Wajeha al-Huwaider. "Women's voices will finally be heard. Now it is time to remove other barriers like not allowing women to drive cars and not being able to function, to live a normal life without male guardians. Robert Lacey, author of two books about the kingdom, said, "This is the first positive, progressive speech out of the government since the Arab Spring.... First the warnings, then the payments, now the beginnings of solid reform." The king made the announcement in a five-minute speech to the Shura Council. In January 2013, King Abdullah issued two royal decrees, granting women thirty seats on the council, and stating that women must always hold at least a fifth of the seats on the council. According to the decrees, the female council members must be "committed to Islamic Shariah disciplines without any violations" and be "restrained by the religious veil". The decrees also said that the female council members would be entering the council building from special gates, sit in seats reserved for women and pray in special worshipping places. Earlier, officials said that a screen would separate genders and an internal communications network would allow men and women to communicate. Women first joined the council in 2013, holding a total of thirty seats. There are two Saudi royal women among these thirty female members of the assembly, Sara bint Faisal Al Saud and Moudi bint Khalid Al Saud. Furthermore, in 2013 three women were named as deputy chairpersons of three committees: Thurayya Obeid was named deputy chairwoman of the human rights and petitions committee, Zainab Abu Talib, deputy chairwoman of the information and cultural committee, and Lubna Al Ansari, deputy chairwoman of the health affairs and environment committee.

Syria

Women's suffrage was introduced in Syria in 1953.

While the women's suffrage reform was supported by the women's magazine '' Nur al-Faya'' of Nazik al-Abid and '' al-Arus'' of Mary Ajami, there was no organized suffrage movement in Syria, and the majority was convinced that women preserved their virtue by staying away from politics.Meininghaus, E. (2016). Creating Consent in Ba‘thist Syria: Women and Welfare in a Totalitarian State. Storbritannien: Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 57

In 1920, the feminist Mary Ajami presented a petition to the Syrian Congress of 1920 during the Faisal-Government, but the subject was postphoned and forgotten after the fall of the Faisal regime.
When the petition of women's suffrage was discussed in the Syrian Congress in 1920, Shaykh Abd al-Qadir al-Kaylani stated that to given women the right to vote would be the same thing as abolish sex segregation and allow women to appear unveiled.

In the 1930s and 1940s, the Arab Women's Union of Damascus presented a women's suffrage petition to President Hashim al-Atassi and to President Shukri al-Quwatli, as well as directly to the Parliament.
When the influential feminist Adila Bayhum gave her support to Husni al-Za'im, he promised her to introduce women's suffrage when he came to power in 1949, and the reform was finally introduced in 1953.

Sri Lanka

In 1931, Sri Lanka (at that time Ceylon) became one of the first Asian countries to allow voting rights to women over the age of 21 without any restrictions. Since then, women have enjoyed a significant presence in the Sri Lankan political arena.

The women's movement organized on Sri Lanka under the Ceylon Women's Union in 1904, and from 1925, the Mallika Kulangana Samitiya and then the Women's Franchise Union (WFU) campaigned successfully for the introduction of women's suffrage, which was achieved in 1931.

The zenith of this favourable condition to women has been the 1960 July General Elections, in which Ceylon elected the world's first female prime minister, Sirimavo Bandaranaike. She became the world's first democratically elected female head of government. Her daughter, Chandrika Kumaratunga also became the Prime Minister later in 1994, and the same year she was elected as the Executive president of Sri Lanka, making her the fourth woman in the world to be elected president, and the first female executive president.

Thailand

The Ministry of Interior's Local Administrative Act of May 1897 (Phraraachabanyat 1897 E 2440 granted municipal suffrage in the election of village leader to all villagers “whose house or houseboat was located in that village,” and explicitly included women voters who met the qualifications.
This was a part of the far-reaching administrative reforms enacted by King Chulalongkorn (r. 1868–1919), in his efforts to protect Thai sovereignty.

In the new constitution introduced after the Siamese revolution of 1932, which transformed Siam from an absolute monarchy to a parliamentary constitutional monarchy, women were granted the right to vote and run for office.Loos, Tamara Lynn (2006)
Subject Siam: Family, Law, and Colonial Modernity in Thailand
'. Cornell University Press. p. 174. This reform was enacted without any prior activism in favor of women's suffrage and was followed by a number of reforms in women's rights, and it has been suggested that the reform was part of an effort by Pridi Bhanomyong to put Thailand on
equal political terms with modern Western powers and establish diplomatic recognition by those as a modern nation. The new right was used for the first time in 1933, and the first female MPs were elected in 1949.

United Arab Emirates

The United Arab Emirates formally introduced women's suffrage in 2006.

Yemen

Historically Yemen was divided in two nations prior to its unification in 1990, both of whom already had women's suffrage prior to the unification. The history of women's suffrage is therefore split.

Women's suffrage was granted in South Yemen in 1967.
The reform was a part of a number of reforms introduced in women's rights under Socialist rule. When the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen was founded as an independent nation under the Socialist NLF Party in 1967, the General Union of Yemeni Women was founded as a part of the regime's policy. The purpose of the GUYW was to enforce the official women's policy of the People's Democratic Republic regime, which was a radical and ambitions state feminism.

Women's suffrage was granted in North Yemen in 1970. The Northern Yemen Arab Republic was a deeply conservative state with sharia law and no strong women's movement, were no reforms in women's rights were not prioritised during the Yemen civil war of 1962–1970.
However, the Second Permanent Constitution of 1970 stated that "all citizens are equal before the law"; and while this phrase did not explicitly include women, women voters used this phrase to vote in the next election, which was held in 1983.

Europe

In Europe, the first two countries to enact women's suffrage were Finland in 1906 and Denmark in 1913, and the last two 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.

Albania

Albania introduced a limited and conditional form of women's suffrage in 1920, and subsequently provided full voting rights in 1945.

Andorra

The Principality of Andorra introduced women's suffrage in 1970 (third last in Europe), though Andorra did not have a democratic constitution until 1993.

In 1969, 3708 signatures demanding women's suffrage and eligibility was presented to the Andorra Council Parliament. In April 1970, women's suffrage was introduced after a vote with 10 votes for and eight against, while however eligibility was voted down. Women's eligibility was introduced on 5 September 1973. The first woman became MP in 1984.

Austria

After the breakdown of the Habsburg monarchy in 1918, Austria granted the general, equal, direct and secret right to vote to all citizens, regardless of sex, through the change of the electoral code in December 1918. The first elections in which women participated were the February 1919 Constituent Assembly elections.

Azerbaijan

Universal voting rights were recognized in Azerbaijan in 1918 by the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic. Thus, making Azerbaijan the first Muslim-majority country to enfranchise women. This early commitment to women's rights was part of a broader movement towards secularization and modernization in the country.

Belgium

A revision of the constitution in October 1921 (it changed art. 47 of the Constitution of Belgium of 1831) introduced the general right to vote according to the "one man, one vote" principle. Art. 47 allowed widows of World War I to vote at the national level as well. The introduction of women's suffrage was already put onto the agenda at the time, by means of including an article in the constitution that allowed approval of women's suffrage by special law (meaning it needed a 2/3 majority to pass). Belgian socialists opposed the women's suffrage, fearing their conservative leanings and their "domination" by the clergy. This happened on March 27, 1948. In Belgium, voting is compulsory.

Bulgaria

Bulgaria left Ottoman rule in 1878. Although the first adopted constitution, the Tarnovo Constitution (1879), gave women equal election rights, in fact women were disenfranchised, not allowed to vote and to be elected. The Bulgarian Women's Union was an umbrella organization of the 27 local women's organisations that had been established in Bulgaria since 1878. It was founded as a reply to the limitations of women's education and access to university studies in the 1890s, with the goal to further women's intellectual development and participation, arranged national congresses and used ''Zhenski glas'' as its organ. However, they had limited success, and women were allowed to vote and to be elected only after when Communist rule was established.

Croatia

Czech Republic

In the former Bohemia, taxpaying women and women in "learned profession were allowed to vote by proxy and made eligible to the legislative body in 1864. The first Czech female MP was elected to the Diet of Bohemia in 1912. The Declaration of Independence of the Czechoslovak Nation from October 18, 1918, declared that "our democracy shall rest on universal suffrage. Women shall be placed on equal footing with men, politically, socially, and culturally," and women were appointed to the Revolutionary National Assembly (parliament) on November 13, 1918. On June 15, 1919, women voted in local elections for the first time. Women were guaranteed equal voting rights by the constitution of the Czechoslovak Republic in February 1920 and were able to vote for the parliament for the first time in April 1920.

Cyprus

Cyprus had no organized women's movement until the mid-20th century and no activism in favor of women's suffrage, which was introduced in the new constitution of 1961 after the liberation from Britain, simply because women's suffrage had at that point came to be regarded as a given thing in international democratic standard.

Denmark

In Denmark, the Danish Women's Society (DK) debated, and informally supported, women's suffrage from 1884, but it did not support it publicly until in 1887, when it supported the suggestion of the parliamentarian Fredrik Bajer to grant women municipal suffrage.Dansk Kvindebiografisk Leksikon In 1886, in response to the perceived overcautious attitude of DK in the question of women suffrage, Matilde Bajer founded the '' Kvindelig Fremskridtsforening'' (or KF, 1886–1904) to deal exclusively with the right to suffrage, both in municipal and national elections, and it 1887, the Danish women publicly demanded the right for women's suffrage for the first time through the KF. However, as the KF was very much involved with worker's rights and pacifist activity, the question of women's suffrage was in fact not given full attention, which led to the establishment of the strictly women's suffrage movement '' Kvindevalgretsforeningen'' (1889–1897). In 1890, the KF and the Kvindevalgretsforeningen united with five women's trade worker's unions to found the '' De samlede Kvindeforeninger'', and through this form, an active women's suffrage campaign was arranged through agitation and demonstration. However, after having been met by compact resistance, the Danish suffrage movement almost discontinued with the dissolution of the De samlede Kvindeforeninger in 1893.

In 1898, an umbrella organization, the '' Danske Kvindeforeningers Valgretsforbund'' or DKV was founded and became a part of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA). In 1907, the Landsforbundet for Kvinders Valgret (LKV) was founded by Elna Munch, Johanne Rambusch and Marie Hjelmer in reply to what they considered to be the much too careful attitude of the Danish Women's Society. The LKV originated from a local suffrage association in Copenhagen, and like its rival DKV, it successfully organized other such local associations nationally.

Women won the right to vote in municipal elections on April 20, 1908. However it was not until June 5, 1915 that they were allowed to vote in Rigsdag elections.

Estonia

Estonia gained its independence in 1918 with the Estonian War of Independence. However, the first official elections were held in 1917. These were the elections of temporary council (i.e. Maapäev), which ruled Estonia from 1917 to 1919. Since then, women have had the right to vote.

The parliament elections were held in 1920. After the elections, two women got into the parliament – history teacher Emma Asson and journalist Alma Ostra-Oinas. Estonian parliament is called Riigikogu and during the First Republic of Estonia it used to have 100 seats.

Finland

The area that in 1809 became Finland had been a group of integral provinces of the Kingdom of Sweden for over 600 years. Thus, women in Finland were allowed to vote during the Swedish Age of Liberty (1718–1772), during which conditional suffrage was granted to tax-paying female members of guilds.* Åsa Karlsson-Sjögren: ''Männen, kvinnorna och rösträtten : medborgarskap och representation 1723–1866'' ("Men, women and the vote: citizenship and representation 1723–1866") (in Swedish) However, this right was controversial. In Vaasa