Women's suffrage
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Women's suffrage or woman suffrage is the right of women to vote and to run for office. The expression is also used for the economic and political reform movement aimed at extending these rights to women and without any restrictions or qualifications such as property ownership, payment of tax, or marital status. The movement's modern origins are attributed to 18th century France. In 1893, the British colony of New Zealand became the first self-governing nation to extend the right to vote to all adult women, and the women of the nearby colony of South Australia achieved the same right in 1895 but became the first to obtain also the right to stand (run) for Parliament (women did not win the right to run for the New Zealand legislature until 1919 The first European country to introduce women's suffrage was the Grand Duchy of Finland and that country, then a part of the Russian Empire with autonomous powers, produced the world's first female members of parliament as a result of the 1907 parliamentary elections.
Women's suffrage has generally been recognized after political campaigns to obtain it were waged. In many countries it was granted before universal suffrage. Women’s suffrage is explicitly stated as a right under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, adopted by the United Nations in 1979.
See also
- Anti-suffragism
- Izola Forrester
- List of the first female holders of political office in Europe
- Open Christmas Letter
- Suffrage
- Timeline of first women's suffrage in majority-Muslim countries
- Timeline of women's rights (other than voting)
- Timeline of women's suffrage
- Women's work
