Europe Women's Suffrage
Most countries in Western and Central Europe, including Great Britain granted women the vote right after World War I, and only in the Scandinavian nations of Norway and Finland did they receive it earlier than that. France stood out as exceptional, however, no matter that it was the homeland of democratic revolution and of the idea of equal rights for women. It also had a highly conservative side and did not allow women's suffrage until 1945. In Southern and Eastern Europe, granting the vote to women was usually delayed at least that long as well, especially due to the influence on the Catholic Church. In any event, the authoritarian or even fascist nature of the regimes in most of these countries made voting irrelevant, but for the most part no movements for women's suffrage and equality even existed in these regions in the 19th Century. Women's suffrage advanced fastest in the Northern Protestant European countries that had the strongest liberal and democratic traditions un the 19th Century, particularly Britain and Scandinavia, although almost everywhere, working class and social democratic parties were the first to formally endorse female voting rights. These parties were almost always the first to introduce the first bills in favor of it in the national legislatures, which were literally men with howls of scorn and ridicule when the subject came up in the 19th Century, as something quite literally comical, absurd or unthinkable. In traditional and conservative societies, as opposed to those that were more urban and industrialized, women were largely confined to their domestic roles and had few opportunities for participation in public political or economic life. In countries with string authoritarian traditions like Germany, Russia, Austria and Italy, where parliaments were either weak or non-existent and not even the majority of men could vote, there was virtually no chance of voting rights being granted to women in the 19th Century.
Great Britain
Great Britain was the first country in Western Europe that began to extend voting rights to all men the Reform Acts of 1832, 1867 and 1884-85, including to laborers and the working class, although full universal suffrage for all males regardless of income and property ownership did not come until the 20th Century. Women age thirty and over were allowed to vote in national elections in 1918, and this was extended to all women over age twenty-one in 1928. Unlike France, which proclaimed universal suffrage for all men in the revolutions of 1789 and 1848, only to abolish it again in the dictatorships or absolute monarchies that were restored later, in Britain the progress toward democratization was slow and steady throughout the 19th Century. Moreover, once certain rights were granted, usually after exhaustive debate and discussion, they were never rescinded again, which did happen on the continent in Germany, Italy, France and Russia when weak liberal regimes collapsed. John Stuart Mill first advocated women's suffrage in On Liberty (1859) and petitioned Parliament to allow women's voting rights during the debate over the 1867 Reform Act. That same year, the first women's suffrage committees were formed in Manchester and other large cities, and almost everywhere the cause of women's suffrage and equality was strongest in the large cities rather than rural areas and small towns, which always tended to be more conservative and traditional.[footnoteRef:1] [1: Jane Rendall, "Citizenship, Culture and Civilization: The Languages of British Suffragists, 1866-1874" in Caroline Daly and Melanie Nolan (eds). Suffrage and Beyond: International Feminist Perspectives (NY: University Press, 1994), p. 129.]
These local committees and societies finally coalesced into the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies in 1896, led by Millicent Garret Fawcett. In contrast to the far more militant Women's Social and Political Union, led by Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters Christabel and Sylvia, these organizations did not engage in civil disobedience, violent protests, arson and smashing or store windows. If the members of the more moderate groups were not jailed, beaten up by the police or going on hunger strikes in jail like the 'suffragettes' and did not go on hunger strikes, neither did they ever manage to get the same amount of public notice as the Pankhurst's -- who made no pretense about women being meek or following traditional domestic roles. In Britain, the suffragists were also disappointed by the pre-1914 Liberal governments, which failed to introduce a bill in parliament, and as in most countries, the Labour Party was actually the first to endorse women's suffrage in 1912. Starting in 1869-70, they were granted the right to vote in local and school board elections, however,...
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