The United States Of America

The Constitution And Democracy

Woman Suffrage
Woman Suffrage, suf'rij, the right of women to vote in political Elections. Woman suffrage represents the first stage in the demand for political equality. It generally comes prior to women running and being elected to national political office and holding major appointive posts.

Individual women demanded suffrage for themselves as early as the 1600s. An organized movement on behalf of woman suffrage, led by women but open to men, first emerged in the United States in 1848. Woman suffragists often met hostility and sometimes violence. In 1893 New Zealand became the first country to grant women the right to vote in national elections. Most adult women throughout the world today can vote.

Women's organizations in many countries made the fight for suffrage their most fundamental demand because they saw it as the defining feature of full citizenship. The philosophy underlying women's suffrage was the belief in "natural rights." Woman suffrage claimed for women the right to govern themselves and choose their own representatives. It asserted that women should enjoy individual rights of self-government, rather than relying on indirect civic participation as the mothers, sisters, or daughters of male voters.

Women's enfranchisement took many decades to achieve because women had to persuade a male electorate to grant them the vote. Many men--and some women--believed that women were not suited by circumstance or temperament for the vote. Western political philosophers insisted that a voter had to be independent, unswayed by appeals from employers, landlords, or an educated elite. Women by nature were believed to be dependent on men and subordinate to them. Many thought women could not be trusted to exercise the independence of thought necessary for choosing political leaders responsibly. It was also believed that women's place was in the home, caring for husband and children. Entry of women into political life, it was feared, challenged the assignment of women to the home and might lead to disruption of the family.

In addition, opposition to women's suffrage took varied shapes in different countries. Politicians feared that enfranchised women might vote them out of office. Priests and ministers held that women should confine their influence to home and children. Socialist and labor parties feared that women might vote for conservative candidates. Specific interests, such as textile companies and the liquor, brewing, and mining industries, did not want to enfranchise women, since women might vote for legislation damaging to their businesses.

North America
Women in the United States and Canada were enfranchised relatively early (1920 and 1918, respectively). Mexico, sharing with much of Latin America a Spanish and Roman Catholic heritage that discouraged enfranchisement of women, did not grant women the vote until much later.

United States
The first woman in the North American colonies to demand the vote was Margaret Brent, the owner of extensive lands in Maryland. In 1647 Brent insisted on two votes in the colonial assembly, one for herself and one for Cecil Calvert, Lord Baltimore, whose power of attorney she held. When the governor denied her request, Brent boycotted the assembly. 

Women in New Jersey could vote initially because a loophole in the state's constitution of 1790 gave the vote to "all inhabitants" who satisfied certain property and residence requirements. Property-holding women took advantage of the constitution's vague wording. A state legislator who had almost been defeated by women voters helped to pass a bill to disenfranchise the state's women and black men in 1807.

American women were the first in the world to voice organized demands for the vote. Abolitionist activists Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, along with several other women friends, convened a meeting in Stanton's hometown of Seneca Falls, N.Y., "to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of women." At the convention, held on July 19-20, 1848, Stanton read her "Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions," and the convention debated and approved a series of resolutions designed to win equality for women. The most controversial, included at Stanton's insistence, stated that "it is the duty of the women in this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the franchise." 
During the Civil War, suffragists shelved their cause temporarily, hoping that at war's end, women as well as emancipated slaves would be enfranchised. After the war Republican party politicians believed enfranchisement of the ex-slaves would be defeated if harnessed to the even more unpopular cause of woman's suffrage. They succeeded in passing the the 14th and 15th amendments, to the U.S. Constitution, which gave the vote to black men but not to women.
In the wake of the passage of these amendments, suffragists split into two rival factions. Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, her longtime colleague, refused to support the 15th Amendment because it did not enfranchise women, favoring passage of another constitutional amendment to do so. They formed the National Woman's Suffrage Association (NWSA) in 1869. Conservative feminists, led by Lucy Stone; her husband, Henry Blackwell; and Julia Ward Howe, supported the 15th Amendment and campaigned for the passage of state laws to enfranchise women. They established the American Woman's Suffrage Association (AWSA) in 1869. But the Supreme Court dashed any hope that the courts might enfranchise women without legislative or constitutional changes. In Minor v. Hapersett (1875) the Court ruled that citizenship did not in itself confer suffrage rights. The AWSA and NWSA eventually reconciled and in 1890 merged to become the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). Anthony retired from the presidency of NAWSA in 1900. Carrie Chapman Catt, the astute political campaigner who succeeded her, organized both a well-coordinated state-by-state and a national effort. By 1910 women had the right to vote in Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, Colorado, and Washington.

The suffrage movement reawakened in the early 20th century. Educated middle-class women questioned the reasons for denying them the right to vote when immigrant men, many of whom were illiterate or poorly educated, could help choose the nation's leaders. Social reformers hoped that a woman's bloc vote might achieve causes they favored, such as laws protecting the health and safety of employed women and the abolition of child labor. Still, the suffrage movement faced considerable opposition.

Alice Paul brought the attention-getting tactics of British suffragists to U.S. shores. In 1916 Paul and other militant activists, inspired by the British woman's movement, left the NAWSA to form the National Woman's Party. To bring pressure on Pres. Woodrow WILSON to back congressional passage of a constitutional amendment, they picketed the White House and chained themselves to the White House fence. Grateful to American women for their active participation during World War I (1917-1918), Congres passed a woman suffrage constitutional amendment by a narrow margin in 1919. It was ratified by the states in August 1920.

Canada
Although influenced by both the English and the U.S. woman suffrage movements, the Canadian movement did not develop a strong national organization or resort to the militant tactics of suffragists in Britain or the United States. Women in Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan won the right to vote in provincial elections in 1916. They were granted the federal franchise two years later. Women in Quebec, however, did not have the right to vote until 1940.

Mexico
In Mexico, geographically part of North America but culturally closely allied with countries to its south with which it shared a Spanish colonial heritage, a movement for woman suffrage developed after the 1911 Revolution. Despite some early successes in the state of Yucatán, women were not permitted to vote and hold office at the municipal level until 1947, by which time they were actively being recruited by the ruling political party. Mexican women finally gained the right to vote in national elections in 1953.

Europe
The English movement provided the model for other European suffragist efforts. 

Great Britain
Individual radicals and radical movements in Britain advocated woman suffrage even before the Seneca Falls meeting in the United States. Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) made the case for woman suffrage, and the Chartist movement raised the issue in the 1840s. Harriet Taylor Mill published "The Enfranchisement of Women" in a radical journal in 1851.

The first British woman suffrage committee was formed in Manchester in 1865. In 1866 Elizabeth Garrett, a physician, collected more than 1,500 petition signatures demanding suffrage for women. John Stuart Mill, a philosopher and the husband of Harriet Taylor Mill, was elected to Parliament on a platform of woman's suffrage in 1865. The next year he attached an amendment to enfranchise women to the Reform Bill, but his amendment was soundly defeated.

Woman suffrage made progress at the municipal level in the late 19th century. Since it was believed that mothers should take an interest in their children's education and in local charities, local suffrage was more acceptable than national suffrage. In 1869 unmarried women householders could vote in municipal elections.

The national movement became more active around 1905. It engaged in mass public demonstrations that generated publicity and attracted the interest of educated middle-class women, women textile workers, and poor women, notably in the East End of London. The moderate National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, led by Millicent Garrett Fawcett, expanded membership, publicized the issue, organized speaking tours, and distributed a journal.

Emmeline Pankhurst and her two daughters, Christabel and Sylvia, founded the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) in 1903. In response to government inaction and police violence, the WSPU turned from nonviolent protest to destruction of property and other militant tactics in 1907. WSPU militants cut telegraph wires, broke windows on Regent Street in London, committed arson, burned letter boxes, and engaged in other militant actions. Suffragist militants--dubbed by the press "suffragettes"--provoked arrest. In prison they went on hunger strikes and were forcibly fed. When World War I broke out, Pankhurst, Fawcett, and most of their followers ceased suffrage activities and committed themselves wholeheartedly to the war effort. During the war women drove ambulances, nursed the wounded, and worked in munitions factories. After the war, public attitudes toward the enfranchisement of women were more favorable. 
In 1918 women over age 30 won the vote. Ten years later women were granted the vote on the same basis as men.

Scandinavia
Women in Scandinavian countries encountered fewer political barriers than did English women. Like their English counterparts, Scandinavian women enjoyed success in winning suffrage first in local elections. Among European women, those in Finland received the vote first (1916). Before World War I women in Norway and Denmark also enjoyed the right to vote. Swedish women were not enfranchised until 1919, although they had voting privileges in municipal elections as early as 1863.

Germany
In Germany public attitudes toward woman suffrage were hostile. A Prussian law of 1851 forbade women, along with mentally ill schoolchildren and apprentices, from joining political parties or attending meetings where political subjects were discussed. The first woman's suffrage association was founded in 1902. Some German suffragists favored universal suffrage for men and women, while others supported limited suffrage for both sexes. After World War I the liberal Weimar Republic announced that all men and women above the age of 20 could vote. When the Nazis came to power, women did not lose the right to vote, but could no longer run for office.

Italy
The woman suffrage movement in Italy began much later than in Britain or Germany. The first bill to enfranchise women was introduced into Parliament in 1919, and in 1925 women were granted limited suffrage. The Mussolini regime, however, passed laws preventing Italian women from voting. Italian women did not gain the right to vote on the same basis with men until the end of World War II.

France
A wartime decree issued by Gen. Charles de Gaulle enfranchised French women in 1944. Among the major European countries, France was one of the last to grant women the vote. Women were active participants in the French Revolution, the French Republic of 1848, and uprisings of the Paris Commune. Nevertheless, a woman-led suffrage movement did not emerge until the late 19th century. Politicians of the Left feared that women would vote for conservatives and thus endanger their power. The Roman Catholic Church opposed suffrage because its leaders believed that suffrage would emancipate women and cause the breakup of the family.

Woman Suffrage in Other Countries
Most of the world's women have been granted the right to vote only since the end of World War II. 

Latin America
Woman suffrage was a relatively unpopular cause in Latin America. The Roman Catholic Church opposed it in Latin America, as elsewhere. In addition, left-wing politicians did not want to give women the right to vote because they feared that women would help elect right-wing candidates. Nonetheless, women formed suffrage organizations in Mexico, Chile, Argentina, and Brazil. Although Ecuador had no woman suffrage movement, it was the first Latin American country to enfranchise women, with the restriction that voting was obligatory for men, but optional for women. Active suffragists such as Maria Jesus Alvarado Riviera of Peru and Dr. Zea Hernandez of Colombia were jailed in their respective countries as political prisoners.

Asia
There were no woman suffrage campaigns in most Asian countries. India and Japan were exceptions. 

In India, Sarojini Naidu headed a deputation of the Women's India Association, which met with the British viceroy to demand the vote in 1919. The Indian National Congress supported woman suffrage. In 1950, soon after Indian independence, women were granted the vote.

Ichiwaka Fusae and other women activists established Fusen Kakutoku Domei ("Women's Suffrage League") in 1924. They succeeded in gaining the right to organize and attend political meetings, from which they had previously been barred. In the 1920s one of the two major political parties supported woman suffrage. The Japanese military took control of the country in the 1930s and quashed all democratic movements, including the movement for woman suffrage. After the Allied nations defeated Japan in 1945, Japanese feminists and women staff officers of the Allied Occupation cooperated in proposing that the new Japanese constitution should enfranchise women. They hoped that women would use the ballot to make the Japanese nation less warlike, and that women would raise their children to believe in peace and democracy. 

In China woman suffrage was granted only after establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949.

Africa
Most African women received the right to vote when their countries gained independence. South Africa continues to restrict women's right to vote on grounds of race. Mixed-race women can vote only for candidates of their own race, who serve in the Coloured Parliament. Neither black women nor black men have the right to vote. Black South African women have been active in demanding the end to apartheid, South Africa's system of racial segregation, and the establishment of a unitary, nonracial state, in which they, as well as black men, would be enfranchised.

Countries in which Women Are No enfranchised
The United Nations enacted the Covenant on Political Rights of Women in 1952. It was the first instrument of international law to state that in all nations women should be entitled to the vote and to hold political office. Nonetheless, in the nations of the Persian Gulf--Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, and the United Emirates--women still remain disenfranchised. Women are also vote less in Equatorial Guinea, Hong Kong, Surinam, and Taiwan. In Bhutan only one member of a household is allowed to vote. In practice, this rule has meant that few women exercise the suffrage.

Aftermath of the Vote
As the majority of the population, women are also the majority of the electorate. Nonetheless, women have not exercised their full potential to vote for issues of special concern to them. Initially after enfranchisement, voter turnout among women in most countries was lower than men's. Female voter turnout matched that of men in Japan, Britain, and Finland in the 1960s, Sweden and Canada in the 1970s, and the United States in the 1980s.

Women voters in most countries have favored candidates of religious parties and of the political Right. Women are more likely than men to be religiously devout and swayed by clerical opinion. But in Britain, Norway, and the United States, from the 1980s, women voters were more likely than men to prefer liberal candidates. 

Women's representation in political appointive and elected office may be visualized as a pyramid. The higher and more powerful the office, the fewer the women officeholders. Women are generally absent from influential appointive, elective, and civil service posts. There are several reasons for this. The claims of family and of balancing paid work and domestic responsibilities have limited the time women can devote to public life. Moreover, the cultural belief that women's domain is the home has created prejudices against women candidates. Finally, women have had difficulty being nominated to high office and securing financing for political campaigns. However, with advances in women's education and employment, and the impact of the women's movement, political representation of women at all levels of government has been improving.

Still, women form a low percentage of the members of national legislatures and of the United Nations General Assembly. On average, the representation of women in national legislative bodies is greater in developed than in developing countries. Women fare best in the Scandinavian countries, where voting is based on proportional representation, rather than on winning a simple plurality. Women are also found in large numbers in the national legislatures of Central European countries and in the republics of the former Soviet Union, where officeholding until recently was largely symbolic. Women were virtually absent from positions of real power on the Soviet Union's Central Committee and the Politburo.

In 1924 the first woman was appointed to a national post as a cabinet officer in Denmark. In 1960 Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka became the first woman elected head of state. Margaret Thatcher of Britain in 1979 became the first woman prime minister of a European nation. Women who have become cabinet officers, prime ministers, and presidents have generally not owed their electoral victory to women and, accordingly, have not felt obliged to respond to the interests of a female electorate or to appoint large numbers of women to public posts.

Elizabeth H. Pleck
Center for Research on Women, Wellesley College 
For Further Reading
DuBois, Ellen, Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Woman's Movement in America, 1848-1969 (Cornell 1978). 
Evans, Richard J., The Feminists: Women's Emancipation Movements in Europe, America, and Australasia, 1840-1920 (Barnes and Noble 1977)
Flexner, Eleanor, Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement in the United States (Harvard Univ. Press 1958)
Ford, Linda, Iron-Jawed Eagles: The Suffrage Militancy of the National Woman's Party, 1912-1920 (Univ. Press of Am. 1991)
Lovenduski, Joni, and Jill Hills, The Politics of the Second Electorate: Women and Public Participation (Routledge 1981)
Meyer, Donald B., Sex and Power: The Rise of Women in America, Russia, Sweden, and Italy (Wesleyan Univ. Press 1987)