Women's suffrage

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.

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.

[26] 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.

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.

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.

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".

[165] 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.

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."

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.

[190] 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 first proposal to give Greek women the right to vote was made on May 19, 1922, by a member of parliament, supported by then Prime Minister Dimitrios Gounaris, during a constitutional convention.

[205] In 1925 consultations began again, and a law was passed allowing women the right to vote in local elections, provided they were 30 years of age and had attended at least primary education.

[215] In 1931, Mabel Strickland, assistant secretary of Constitution Party, delivered a petition signed by 428 to the Royal Commission on Maltese Affairs requesting women's suffrage without success.

[222][223] Carolina Beatriz Ângelo was the first Portuguese woman to vote, in the Constituent National Assembly election of 1911,[224] taking advantage of a loophole in the country's electoral law.

[186] The other female MP at the time, Clara Campoamor of the liberal Radical Party, was a strong advocate of women's suffrage and she was the one leading the Parliament's affirmative vote.

In Turkey, Atatürk, the founding president of the republic, led a secularist cultural and legal transformation supporting women's rights including voting and being elected.

[253] During the later half of the 19th century, a number of campaign groups for women's suffrage in national elections were formed in an attempt to lobby members of parliament and gain support.

In 1897, seventeen of these groups came together to form the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), who held public meetings, wrote letters to politicians and published various texts.

In 1909 Lady Constance Lytton was imprisoned, but immediately released when her identity was discovered, so in 1910 she disguised herself as a working class seamstress called Jane Warton and endured inhumane treatment which included force-feeding.

[259] The National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, which had always employed "constitutional" methods, continued to lobby during the war years, and compromises were worked out between the NUWSS and the coalition government.

[269] New Zealand's Electoral Act of September 19, 1893 made the self-governing British colony the first country in the world to grant women the right to vote in parliamentary elections.

Women recently have also occupied powerful and symbolic offices such as those of Prime Minister (Jenny Shipley, Helen Clark and Jacinda Ardern), Governor-General (Catherine Tizard, Patsy Reddy, Cindy Kiro and Silvia Cartwright), Chief Justice (Sian Elias and Helen Winkelmann), Speaker of the House of Representatives (Margaret Wilson), and from March 3, 2005, to August 23, 2006, all four of these posts were held by women, along with Queen Elizabeth as Head of State.

[273] Important advocates for women's suffrage include Hermila Galindo (Mexico), Eva Perón (Argentina), Alicia Moreau de Justo (Argentina), Julieta Lanteri (Argentina), Celina Guimarães Viana (Brazil), Ivone Guimarães (Brazil), Henrietta Müller (Chile), Marta Vergara (Chile), Lucila Rubio de Laverde (Colombia), María Currea Manrique (Colombia), Josefa Toledo de Aguerri (Nicaragua), Elida Campodónico (Panama), Clara González (Panama), Gumercinda Páez (Panama), Paulina Luisi Janicki (Uruguay), Carmen Clemente Travieso, (Venezuela).

A similar right was extended in the province of Santa Fe where a constitution that ensured women's suffrage was enacted at the municipal level, although female participation in votes initially remained low.

It requires, in short, the transformation of the concept of woman who sacrificially has increased the number of its duties without seeking the minimum of their rights.The bill was presented the new constitutional government assumed immediately after the May 1, 1946.

Although it was a brief text in three articles, that practically could not give rise to discussions, the Senate recently gave preliminary approval to the project August 21, 1946, and had to wait over a year for the House of Representative to publish the September 9, 1947, Law 13,010, establishing equal political rights between men and women and universal suffrage in Argentina.

[291] However, the qualifications were extreme and excluded 80 percent of women so the suffrage movement continued its campaign in the 1940s, notably by Matilde Elena López and Ana Rosa Ochoa, until the restrictions was lifted in 1950.

In July, at the Seneca Falls Convention in upstate New York, activists including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony began a seventy-year struggle by women to secure the right to vote.

[118] In actuality, it was the men of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that ultimately fought for women's enfranchisement to dispel myths that polygamy was akin to modern-day slavery.

Another ongoing tactic of the National Woman's Party was watchfires, which involved burning copies of President Wilson's speeches, often outside the White House or in the nearby Lafayette Park.