I | INTRODUCTION |
Woman
Suffrage, right of women to share on equal terms with men the political
privileges afforded by representative government and, more particularly, to vote
in elections and referendums and to hold public office. Equal political rights
for women have been advocated since antiquity. Under the autocratic forms of
government that prevailed in ancient times and under the feudal regimes of the
Middle Ages, however, suffrage was so restricted, even among men, that
enfranchisement of women never attained the status of a major political issue.
Conditions warranted organized woman-suffrage movements only after suffrage had
been won by large, formerly disfranchised groups of the male population as a
consequence of the democratic revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries.
II | IN COLONIAL AMERICA |
The women’s suffrage movement originated in
the United States during the 19th century. In colonial America, as elsewhere in
the world, civil law did not recognize the equality of men and women. The
perception of inequality, which included the belief that women lacked the
capacity to reason as soundly as men, provided the basis for denying women the
right to vote. Even before the American Revolution (1776-1783), however,
American women participated in public life somewhat more freely than European
women. In most colonies land ownership, not gender, determined the right to
vote. Although females possessed only limited property rights, women from
families that owned property could sometimes vote, particularly if the male head
of household was for some reason incapacitated. In Massachusetts women property
holders had voting privileges from 1691 to 1780. In this period, groups such as
the American Quakers, and some individuals, notably the Anglo-American political
philosopher Thomas Paine, also argued that women should possess the right to
vote.
After the American Revolution, the framers of
the Constitution of the United States reserved decisions about qualifications
for voting to the individual states. By the early 19th century, most states had
dropped the property qualification and extended voting rights to all adult
males. Ironically, the extension of democracy to a broader base of men
represented a double setback for women. By definition, laws giving only men the
right to vote now excluded women solely on the basis of their gender. In
addition, by eliminating property ownership as a requirement for voting, these
laws deprived women of the only legal claim for a right to vote that they
previously had.
III | ABOLITIONISM AND TEMPERANCE |
During the first half of the 19th century
American suffragists worked mainly through the abolitionist and the temperance
movements, but antifeminist prejudices severely limited the role of woman
members. A notable instance of such prejudice occurred at the London
Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840. For several days the convention debated
bitterly the right of eight American women to take part in the proceedings.
Internationally famous clergymen contended during the debate that equal status
for women was contrary to the will of God. Eventually two of the women, the
noted American feminists Lucretia Coffin Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, were
seated behind a curtain, effectively shielded from view and denied the right to
speak.
After many such rebuffs American suffragists
decided to create a separate movement dedicated to women’s rights. Prominent
early in the movement were, besides Mott and Stanton, the brilliant American
feminists Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, Abby Kelley Foster, and Ernestine Rose.
American men active in support of woman suffrage included antislavery leader
Frederick Douglass, clergymen Henry Ward Beecher and Wendell Phillips, and
essayist and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson.
IV | THE SENECA FALLS CONVENTION |
In July 1848, on the initiative of Mott and
Stanton, the first women’s rights convention met at a Wesleyan church chapel in
Seneca Falls, New York. Between 100 and 300 people attended the convention,
among them many male sympathizers. After serious discussion of proposed means to
achieve their ends, the delegates finally agreed that the primary goal should be
attainment of the franchise. The convention then adopted a Declaration of
Sentiments patterned after the American Declaration of Independence.
Public reaction to the Seneca Falls convention
presaged a stormy future for the new movement. Although many prominent
Americans, including the famed editor Horace Greeley and the abolitionist leader
William Lloyd Garrison, warmly supported it, many citizens and the great
majority of newspapers responded with ridicule, fury, and vilification.
Suffragists were called the shrieking sisterhood, branded as unfeminine, and
accused of immorality and drunkenness. Later, when suffragist leaders undertook
speaking tours in support of women’s rights, temperance, and abolition, they
were often subjected to physical violence. Meetings repeatedly were stormed and
disrupted by gangs of street bullies. On one occasion when Anthony spoke in
Albany, New York, the city mayor sat on the rostrum brandishing a revolver to
discourage possible attacks by hoodlums in the audience. Despite intimidation,
the woman-suffrage and abolitionist movements continued for some years to grow
side by side.
V | AFTER THE CIVIL WAR |
Bitter disagreements over strategy engendered a
schism between the suffragist and abolitionist groups after the American Civil
War. Many male abolitionists voiced fears that the demands of women suffragists
might impede the campaign to gain voting rights for male ex-slaves. The issue
came to a head in 1868, when the abolitionists pressed for a constitutional
amendment enfranchising all Americans regardless of race, creed, or color.
Suffragists retorted that the proposed amendment made no mention of women. The
abolitionists answered that the suffragists should defer their claims rather
than endanger passage of the amendment. To many suffragists, notably Stanton and
Anthony, postponement was unacceptable. In May 1869 the two feminist leaders
created the independent National Woman Suffrage Association, with the objective
of securing enactment of a federal woman-suffrage law. Another suffragist
faction, led by Lucy Stone and Henry Ward Beecher, countered in November of the
same year by founding the American Woman Suffrage Association. That group worked
for gradual adoption of woman suffrage on a state-by-state basis. The territory
of Wyoming gave women the vote in 1869.
After the passage (1870) of the 15th Amendment
to the U.S. Constitution, Anthony interpreted the law as enfranchising American
women as well as male ex-slaves. She went to the polls in Rochester, New York,
in 1872 and persuaded the election inspectors to let her and 12 other women
register and vote. Two weeks after the election she, her 12 friends, and 3 of
the election inspectors were arrested. Anthony received a grossly unfair trial,
during which the judge repeatedly displayed antifeminist prejudices. At the
height of the proceedings the judge, apparently anticipating a jury verdict in
her favor, dismissed the jury and imposed on her a fine of $100. Anthony refused
to pay the fine, whereupon the judge, apprehensive that she might appeal to
higher courts, allowed her to go free. Her friends never were brought to trial.
The election inspectors received heavy fines, which were paid by sympathetic
spectators. The case aroused widespread interest, but the ban against woman
suffrage remained.
VI | SUFFRAGE GAINS |
Anthony’s ordeal had the effect, however, of
lending impetus to the feminist movement. In 1890 the Stanton-Anthony group
merged with the Stone-Beecher faction to form the National American Woman
Suffrage Association. For many years thereafter the association worked to
advance women’s rights on both the state and federal levels. Besides Stone,
Anthony, and Stanton, leaders and supporters of the association included the
noted American feminists Harriet Beecher Stowe, Julia Ward Howe, Clara Barton,
Jane Addams, and Carrie Chapman Catt. Largely as a result of agitation by the
association, suffrage was granted in the states of Colorado (1893), Utah and
Idaho (1896), and Washington (1910). In addition, the association in 1910
secured 500,000 signatures for a petition urging federal woman-suffrage
legislation. California granted women full suffrage in 1911; Kansas, Oregon, and
Arizona followed in 1912; Nevada and Montana in 1914; New York in 1917; and
Michigan, Oklahoma and South Dakota in 1918.
The American suffragist movement scored its
climactic victory shortly after World War I. In 1919 Congress approved the 19th
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which provided that “The right of citizens
of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United
States or by any State on account of sex.” Ratified on August 18, 1920, the 19th
Amendment became the law of the land. See also League of Women Voters of
the United States.
VII | BRITISH SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT |
In Britain the woman-suffrage movement
roughly paralleled that of the United States, but in the movement’s later stages
more vigorous and violent tactics were often employed.
The great pioneer figure of British feminism
was the writer Mary Wollstonecraft, her chief work, A Vindication of the
Rights of Woman (1792), is one of the major feminist documents of the 18th
century. During the 1830s and ‘40s British suffragism received notable aid and
encouragement from the Chartists (see Chartism), who fought
unsuccessfully for a sweeping program of human rights. In subsequent years the
woman-suffrage issue was kept before the British public by a succession of
liberal legislators, among them the statesmen and social philosophers John
Stuart Mill, John Bright, and Richard Cobden. Mill helped to found in 1865 the
first British woman-suffrage association. All efforts to secure the franchise
for women were effectively opposed. Prominent among the antifeminists of the
period were the reigning monarch Queen Victoria and the British prime ministers
William Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli.
The British woman-suffrage movement acquired
additional impetus when in 1897 various feminist groups merged to form the
National Union of Woman Suffrage Societies. A section of the membership soon
decided that its policies were timid and indecisive, and in 1903 the dissident
and more militant faction, led by feminist Emmeline Pankhurst, established the
Women’s Social and Political Union. Pankhurst’s suffragists soon won a
reputation for boldness and militancy. Tactics employed by the organization
included boycotting, bombing, window breaking, picketing, and harassment of
antisuffragist legislators. In 1913 one dedicated suffragist publicized her
cause by deliberately hurling herself to death under the hooves of horses racing
in the derby at Epsom Downs. Because of their forceful and provocative behavior,
the suffragists were often handled roughly by the police and repeatedly jailed
and fined.
During World War I the British suffragists
ceased agitation and made notable contributions to many aspects of the war
effort, favorably influencing public opinion. In 1918 Parliament enfranchised
all women householders, householders’ wives, and women university graduates over
30 years of age. Parliament lowered the voting age of women to 21 in 1928,
giving them complete political equality with men. In 1929 British trade union
leader Margaret G. Bondfield became the first woman cabinet member in British
history. A major breakthrough occurred in 1979 when Margaret Thatcher became the
first woman prime minister of the United Kingdom; she served three successive
terms before leaving office in 1990.
VIII | SUFFRAGE IN OTHER COUNTRIES |
Meanwhile and subsequently most of the
other nations of the world enacted woman-suffrage legislation. Among the first
to do so were the following, each of which granted the franchise to women before
the mid-20th century: New Zealand (1893); Australia (1902); Finland (1906);
Norway (1913); Denmark (1915); the Netherlands and the Soviet Union (1917);
Canada and Luxembourg (1918); Austria, Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic
and Slovakia), Germany, Poland, and Sweden (1919); Belgium (partial, 1919; full,
1948); Ecuador (1929); South Africa (1930); Brazil and Uruguay (1932); Turkey
and Cuba (1934); France (1944); Italy and Japan (1946); China and Argentina
(1947); South Korea and Israel (1948); Chile, India, and Indonesia (1949).
Switzerland granted the franchise to women in 1971. By the 1980s, women could
vote virtually everywhere in the world, except for a few Muslim countries. As of
mid-2005, when women in Kuwait won suffrage, women could vote in all countries
where men could vote except Saudi Arabia. Women who attained national leadership
posts in modern times include prime ministers Golda Meir of Israel, Indira
Gandhi of India, and Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan, and presidents Corazon Aquino
and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo of the Philippines, Mary Robinson of Ireland,
Violeta Barrios de Chamorro of Nicaragua, Megawati Sukarnoputri of Indonesia,
Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga of Sri Lanka, and Vaira Vike-Freiberga of
Latvia.
IX | WOMEN’S RIGHTS |
With the widespread extension of the
franchise to women, the women’s rights movement broadened its scope during the
20th century. Among the rights sought currently by feminist groups throughout
the world are the right to serve on juries, the right to retain earnings and
property after marriage, the right to retain citizenship after marriage to an
alien, and the right to equal pay and equal job opportunity. In the late 1960s
so-called women’s liberation movements were organized and became active. See
Women’s Rights.
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