Flora Dunlap (born 1872) was an American social worker and social reform activist in Iowa.[1] She served as the president of the Iowa Equal Suffrage Association in 1913. She headed the Roadside Settlement House in Des Moines, Iowa. Dunlap was the first woman to ever serve on the Board of Education of Des Moines.[2] She was a friend of Jane Addams and a supporter of the Women's Suffrage Movement.
Early life and education
Dunlap was born in 1872 to Mary and Samuel W. Dunlap. Growing up in Circleville, Ohio, she attended school in nearby Columbus.[3] She graduated from Cincinnati Wesleyan College.[1]
Settlement houses
Dunlap earned an apprenticeship at the Kingsley Settlement House a year later.[3] Following the apprenticeship, Dunlap went on to live in the Goodrich House in Cleveland, as well as the Hull House in Chicago.[4] Dunlap found the widespread fame of the Hull House to be “…a stimulating, an absorbing, and a bewildering place in which to live and work.”[4] However, she wished to work in a smaller city rather than staying in Chicago despite her love for Hull House.[4] After Dunlap resigned her position at the Roadside Settlement House in September 1916, she headed the Neighborhood Guild House in Brooklyn, New York.[3] Dunlap ultimately returned to the Roadside Settlement in 1918, where she maintained head resident until 1924.
Roadside Settlement
Jane Addams referred Dunlap to the Roadside Settlement in Des Moines, and Dunlap accepted the position of head resident in 1904.[3] Dunlap had been offered to go to another house in the east, however Addams believed she would have more autonomy in the western area. The settlement was located in a commercial neighborhood, causing a decrease in clientele to serve.[4]
The settlement board voted to relocate the home to South Bottom near the Des Moines River.[4] Dunlap oversaw the construction of this three-story brick building.[4] The new home opened in 1906 and was regarded by Dunlap as one of her greatest achievements.[3] As the Roadside house became open to the public, Dunlap established several programs including sewing and cooking classes, as well as manual training and literary clubs.[4] Dunlap served as head resident of the Roadside Settlement House for two decades.[3]
Elected office and activism
Board of education
In 1912 Dunlap ran for the Des Moines school board. Her community involvement earned Dunlap the support of local women’s clubs who endorsed her candidacy and distributed her campaign advertisements in various local establishments. Dunlap won the election as the first woman to ever serve on the board.[2] After three years of serving, Dunlap reported it was “the most unpleasant and most futile task” she had managed.[3] Dunlap concluded the board was not ready for women and neglected to run for re-election after complaining none of the other male members would speak or listen to her opinions.[3]
Iowa Equal Suffrage Association
During this same time period, Dunlap served as legislative chair of the Iowa Federation of Women’s Clubs.[3] In 1913 Dunlap won the presidency of the Iowa Equal Suffrage Association.[3] She held office for this position until 1916. During her three years of presidency, Dunlap took to the streets and visited 30 towns to hold educational open-air meetings.[3] In 1916 Dunlap led a campaign in which an amendment to the state constitution was submitted to voters to allow women the right to vote. Dunlap was an active member of Des Moines Women's Club from 1907 to 1926.
In 1917 and 1918, Dunlap maintained the position of regional director of the girls division of the War Camp Community Service.[3]
The settlement movement was a reformist social movement that began in the 1880s and peaked around the 1920s in the United Kingdom and the United States. Its main object was the establishment of settlement houses in poor urban areas, in which volunteer middle-class "settlement workers" would live, hoping to share knowledge and culture with, and alleviate the poverty of, their low-income neighbors. The settlement houses provided services such as daycare, English classes, and healthcare to improve the lives of the poor in these areas.[1] The settlement movement also spawned educational/reform movements. Both in the United Kingdom and the United States, settlement workers worked to develop a unique activist form of sociology known as Settlement Sociology. This science of the social movement is neglected in the history of sociology in favor of a teaching-, theory- and research university–based model.[2]
History
United Kingdom
Toynbee Hall settlement house, founded 1884, pictured here in 1902
Bishop Creighton House, founded 1907 in Fulham in memory of the late Bishop of London
The movement started in 1884 with the founding of Toynbee Hall in Whitechapel, in the East End of London. These houses, radically different from those later examples in America, often offered food, shelter, and basic and higher education, provided by virtue of charity on part of wealthy donors, the residents of the city, and (for education) scholars who volunteered their time.
Victorian Britain, increasingly concerned with poverty, gave rise to the movement whereby those connected to universities settled students in slum areas to live and work alongside local people. Through their efforts settlement houses were established for education, savings, sports, and arts. Such institutions were often praised by religious representatives concerned with the lives of the poor, and criticised as normative or moralistic by radical social movements.[citation needed]
There were basic commonalities in the movement. These institutions were more concerned with societal causes for poverty, especially the changes that came with industrialisation, rather than personal causes which their predecessors believed were the main reason for poverty. The settlement movement believed that social reform was best pursued and pushed for by private charities. The movement was oriented toward a more collectivist approach and was seen as a response to socialist challenges that confronted the British political economy and philanthropy.[3]
The British Association of Settlements and Social Action Centres is a network of such organisations. Other early examples include Browning Hall, formed in Walworth in 1895 by Francis Herbert Stead, and Mansfield House Settlement, also in east London (see Percy Alden). Oxford House in Bethnal Green was sponsored by High Church Anglicans associated with Oxford University. West London saw its first settlement not until 1907. Dogged by overcrowding, unsanitary conditions and rank poverty, the new arrivals attracted by work in Edwardian Fulham elicited the concern of the late Victorian Bishop of London, Mandell Creighton and his wife, Louise, lodged in Fulham Palace. After his early death, his widow founded Bishop Creighton House Settlement in Lillie Road, Fulham, in his memory.[4] In Edinburgh, the New College Settlement was founded in 1893, followed by the Edinburgh University Settlement in 1905.[5][6] Bristol University Settlement was founded by Marian Pease and Hilda Cashmore in 1911.[7]
There is also a global network, The International Federation of Settlements and Neighborhood Centers (IFS).[8]
The movement gave rise to many social policy initiatives and innovative ways of working to improve the conditions of the most excluded members of society. The Poor Man's Lawyer service came about because a barrister volunteered his time and encouraged his friends to do the same. In general, the settlement movement, and settlement houses in particular, "have been a foundation for social work practice in this country".[9]
As higher education opened up to women, young female graduates came into the settlement movement. The Women's University Settlement (now Blackfriars Settlement) was founded in 1887 "by women from Girton and Newnham Colleges at Cambridge University, Lady Margaret, and Somerville Colleges at Oxford University and Bedford and Royal Holloway Universities".[10][11][12]
Australia
Australia's first settlement activity was begun by the University of Sydney Women's Society. The Society was instigated by Helen Phillips when she was the first tutor of women students at the University of Sydney in 1891–1892. Before she took up that position, Phillips visited Cambridge and Oxford Universities in England to find out how they supported women students. She also visited her younger brother, William Inchbold Phillips, Priest in Charge, St John's College Mission (Lady Margaret Church) Walworth[13] where she learned more about the work of the college mission. The mission involved university students in charitable works and educating poorer people in the area in the settlement movement tradition.[14][15] She took the model back to Australia and formed the Women's Society which focused on visiting patients in hospitals and setting up night schools particularly a night school for girls at Millers Point, Sydney.[16][17][18] After Phillips left the university for missionary and education work in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) the founding principal of the new Women's College, Louisa Macdonald developed settlement work further through the Women's Association. Over the years The Settlement gained the support of other partners and provided services for Aboriginal and migrant families and is now known as The Settlement Neighbourhood Centre in Darlington, Sydney New South Wales.[19]
United States
See also: Social Gospel and New York State Tenement House Act
Bohemian immigrant youth at the Lessie Bates Davis Neighborhood House in 1918 in East St. Louis, Illinois
The settlement movement model was introduced in the United States by Jane Addams[20] after travelling to Europe and learning about the system in England.[21] It was Addams who became the leading figure of the settlement movement in the United States with the help of like-minded personalities such as Mary Rozet Smith, Mary Keyser, Alice Hamilton, Julia Lathrop, Florence Kelley, and Ella May Dunning Smith, among others.[21]
The settlement movement became popular due to the socio-economic situation in the United States between 1890 and 1910, when more than 12 million European people immigrated to the country. They came from Ireland, Russia, Italy and other European countries and provided cheap factory labor, a demand that was necessitated by the country's expansion into the west and rapid industrialization following the Civil War. Many immigrants lived in crowded and disease-ridden tenements, worked long hours, and lived in poverty. Children often worked to help support the family. The movement's goal was to help first generation American-born children from the tenements make the transition from the cultures of their immigrant parents to that of the new country and to generally bring the rich and the poor of society together in both physical proximity and social connection.[citation needed] Jacob Riis wrote How the Other Half Lives in 1890 about the lives of immigrants on New York City's Lower East Side to bring greater awareness of the immigrant's living conditions.[22]
The most famous settlement house in the United States is Chicago's Hull House, founded by Addams and Ellen Gates Starr in 1889 after Addams visited Toynbee Hall within the previous two years. Hull House, unlike the charity and welfare efforts which preceded it, was not a religious-based organization. Instead of Christian ethic, Addams opted to ground her settlement on democratic ideals.[21] It focused on providing education and recreational facilities for European immigrant women and children.[23]
Katharine Coman, Vida Scudder, and Katharine Lee Bates were among a group of women who founded Denison House in Boston in 1892. Union Settlement Association, founded in 1894, Whittier House, founded in 1894, Lenox Hill Neighborhood House, founded in 1894, Friendly Inn Settlement House, founded in 1894, Henry Street Settlement, founded in 1893, Hiram House, founded in 1896, Houchen House in El Paso Texas, founded in 1912 and University Settlement House, founded in 1886 and the oldest in the United States, were, like Hull House, important institutions for social reform in America's teeming, immigrant-dominant urban communities. United Neighborhood Houses of New York is the federation of 38 settlement houses in New York City.[24] These and other settlement houses inspired the establishment of settlement schools to serve isolated rural communities in Appalachia, such as the Hindman Settlement School in 1902 and the Pine Mountain Settlement School in 1913.[citation needed]
A count of American settlements reported: 74 in 1897; 103 in 1900; 204 in 1905; and 413 by 1911 in 32 states.[25] By the 1920s, the number of settlement houses in the country peaked at almost 500.[23] The settlement house concept was continued by Dorothy Day's Catholic Worker "hospitality houses" in the 1930s. By 1993 the estimated number of houses dropped to 300 in 80 cities.[26] In 2012, Boulevard House was established in Southwest Detroit, Michigan.
The American settlement movement sprang out of the then-fashionable philosophy of "scientific philanthropy", a model of social reform that touted the transmission of "proper" (i.e. WASP) values, behavior, and morals to the working classes through charitable but also rigorously didactic programs as a cure to the cycle of poverty. Many settlement workers joined the movement out of a strong conviction that effective social welfare programs were the only thing that could prevent the pernicious development in the United States of a European-style entrenched social class system.
Russia
Site of the Communal Club for Working Children, a cornerstone of the Russian Settlement network.
The movement also spread to late imperial Russia, as Stanislav Shatsky and Alexander Zelenko set up a network of educational and social institutions in northern Moscow in 1905, naming it "Settlement" ("Сетлемент", the English word transliterated to Russian). This network of institutions was closed down by the government in 1908, due to alleged socialist activities.[27]
Description
Today, settlements are still community-focused organizations, providing a range of services including early education, youth guidance and crime intervention, senior programs, and specialized programs for young people who have "aged out" of the foster care system. Since they are staffed by professional employees and students, they no longer require that employees live alongside those they serve.
Legacy and impact
Settlement houses influenced urban design and architecture in the twentieth century. For example, James Rossant of Conklin + Rossant agreed with Robert E. Simon's social vision and consciously sought to mix economic backgrounds when drawing up the master plan for Reston, Virginia.[28] The New Monastic movement has a similar goal and model.
The settlement house, in fact, was the first effective effort, not merely to overcome the barbarism of the submerged areas of the metropolis, but to establish in its random neighborhoods an appropriate social nucleus which could serve as a meeting-point for its social and educational activities ... The colonization of the slums by means of the Settlement House was an important event: not merely did it give the slum dweller himself his first glimpse of art, literature, drama, music, play : not merely did it provide a place for clubs and social groups to meet. Something else happened. The success of the Settlement House called attention to the fact that more prosperous neighborhoods were in fact equally devoid of the elementary organs of association: civically speaking, every middle-class neighborhood was a nonentity, too. It was, then, precisely out of the most degrading poverty and the most disorganized environment that the new conception of an organized urban neighborhood, with a central building adapted to a varied round of communal activities, took shape. This conception is fundamental to the best housing and community building that have been done during the past generation : it will probably remain, even though the name disappear and the institution be modified, the most fundamental cultural contribution of the metropolis to the new order.
— Lewis Mumford, The Culture of Cities (Brace, Harcourt and Company, 1938), p.298
See also
Women's suffrage is the right of women to vote in elections. Historically, women rarely had the right to vote, even in ostensibly democratic systems of government.[1] The 19th century saw many movements advocating "universal [male] suffrage", most notably in Europe and North America; following this, movements for women's suffrage became prominent, and between the late 19th century and the early 20th century, women's suffrage was accomplished in Australasia, then Europe, and then the Americas.[2][3][1][4] By the middle of the 20th century, women's suffrage had been established as a norm of democratic governance.[1] Extended political campaigns by women and their male supporters played a central role in changing public attitudes, altering norms, and achieving legislation or constitutional amendments for women's suffrage.[1]
The first wave of women's suffrage took place in 1893–1930, covering English-speaking countries, Scandinavian states, and some other parts of Europe.[1] The experience of the First World War has been characterized as an important factor in shifting public support for women's suffrage.[5] The second wave, 1930–1970, covered nearly all Latin-American countries, much of Sub-Saharan Africa and some European laggards (France, Spain, Belgium).[1]
Prior to 1893, there were instances where women could vote in some elections and at the subnational level. The first national granting of women's suffrage was in 1893 in the then self-governing[6] British colony of New Zealand. National and international organizations formed to coordinate efforts towards women voting, especially the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (founded in 1904 in Berlin, Germany).[7] Most major Western powers extended voting rights to women by the interwar period, including Canada (1917), Germany (1918), Austria, the Netherlands (1919), the United States (1920) and the United Kingdom (1928).[8] Notable exceptions in Europe were France, where women could not vote until 1944, Greece (equal voting rights for women did not exist there until 1952, although, since 1930, literate women were able to vote in local elections), and Switzerland (where, since 1971, women could vote at the federal level, and between 1959 and 1990, women got the right to vote at the local canton level).
In many countries, limited suffrage for women was granted before universal suffrage for men; for instance, literate women or property owners were granted suffrage before all men received it. The United Nations encouraged women's suffrage in the years following World War II, and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979) identifies it as a basic right with 189 countries currently being parties to this convention.
History
For a chronological guide, see Timeline of women's suffrage.
Anna II, Abbess of Quedlinburg. In the pre-modern era in some parts of Europe, abbesses were permitted to participate and vote in various European national assemblies by virtue of their rank within the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches.
Before the 19th century
In ancient Athens, often cited as the birthplace of democracy, only adult male citizens could vote. Women, slaves, and metics (resident foreigners) could not.[citation needed] Through subsequent centuries, Europe was ruled by monarchs, though various forms of parliament arose at different times. The high rank ascribed to abbesses within the Catholic Church permitted some women the right to sit and vote at national assemblies – as with various high-ranking abbesses in Medieval Germany, who were ranked among the independent princes of the empire. Their Protestant successors enjoyed the same privilege almost into modern times.[9]
Marie Guyart, a French nun who worked with the First Nations people of Canada during the 17th century, wrote in 1654 regarding the suffrage practices of Iroquois women: "These female chieftains... have a deciding vote in the councils. They make decisions there like their male counterparts, and it is they who even delegated as first ambassadors to discuss peace."[10] The Iroquois, like many First Nations in North America,[citation needed] had a matrilineal kinship system. Property and descent were passed through the female line. Women elders voted on hereditary male chiefs and could depose them.
South Australian suffragist Catherine Helen Spence stood for office in 1897. In a first for the modern world, South Australia granted women the right to stand for Parliament in 1895.[11]
Marie Stritt (1855–1928), German suffragist, co-founder of the International Alliance of Women
The first independent country to introduce women's suffrage was arguably Sweden. In Sweden, conditional women's suffrage was in effect during the Age of Liberty (1718–1772).[12]
In 1756, Lydia Taft became the first legal woman voter in colonial America. This occurred under British rule in the Massachusetts Colony.[13] In a New England town meeting in Uxbridge, Massachusetts, she voted on at least three occasions.[14]
Under the July 2, 1776 declaration of its independence from English rule, unmarried white women who owned property could vote in New Jersey and that remained unchanged until 1807.[15]
In the 1792 elections in Sierra Leone, then a new British colony, all heads of household could vote and one-third were ethnic African women.[16]
Before the 19th century, some countries granted women the right to vote partially or temporarily:[17]
in Rome, in 1591, during the short pontificate of Pope Innocent IX (November–December 1591), men and women over 14 years old had the right to vote;
in Sweden, between 1718 and 1771, major single or widowed women (married women are excluded), owners, subject to tax and members of guilds were authorized to participate in local and national elections. These rights were annulled in 1758 for local elections and in 1772 for national elections. The right to vote in municipal elections was again granted to major single women, taxable and owners between 1862 and 1919;
the Republic of Corsica in 1755, and until its fall in 1769, implicitly granted the right to vote to single or widowed women (the electoral majority being set at 25 years);
in France, under the Ancien Régime, women legally declared heads of family (widows, single women, or in cases of the husband's absence) had the right to vote in municipal assemblies until 1789. From 1302 until 1789, noble women who owned fiefs and mother abbesses were summoned to the Estates General to elect their representatives. In the elections to the Estates General of 1789, members of religious communities were admitted to vote, as well as, for the Third Estate, heads of agricultural or business operations, and in the cities, members of trade bodies and communities. Women were then explicitly excluded from the electorate starting from the elections to the Legislative Assembly of 1791 and until 1945.
Territorial entities, subnational, non-state or not recognized, also preceded many countries:[18]
the State of New Jersey (United States) from 1776 to 1807 under the condition, as for men, of being themselves owners;
Lower Canada (British colonial province corresponding partially to current Quebec and Labrador), from 1791 and under the condition, as for men, of being themselves owners, restricted in 1834 and finally withdrawn after the Rebellions of 1837–1838, in 1849;
the Pitcairn Islands (United Kingdom dependency) in 1838;
the Mormon State of Deseret (1847) (became Utah in 1850);
the province of Vélez (Colombia) from 1853 to its integration into the federal State of Santander in 1857;
the territory of Wyoming (United States) in 1869 with right to eligibility. A few months later in 1870, a woman was elected justice of the peace in Laramie, the same year in the same city another is elected court bailiff (Court Bailiff);
the territory of Utah (United States) in 1870. A federal Congressional act suppressed it in 1887;
the Isle of Man (United Kingdom dependency) in 1881;
the territory of Washington in 1883, suppressed by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1887;
Wyoming as a state in 1890;
Colorado (United States) in 1893;
the Cook Islands (British protectorate) in 1893;
South Australia (autonomous British colony) from 1895; became one of the first territories in the world to allow women to be candidates in legislative elections;
Utah (admission to the Union) and Idaho (United States) in 1896.
Other early instances of women's suffrage included the Corsican Republic (1755), the Pitcairn Islands (1838), the Isle of Man (1881), and Franceville (1889–1890); but some of these operated only briefly as independent states, and others were not clearly independent.
South Australian suffragist Catherine Helen Spence stood for office in 1897. In a first for the modern world, South Australia granted women the right to stand for Parliament in 1895.[19]
19th century
The female descendants of the Bounty mutineers who lived on Pitcairn Islands could vote from 1838. This right was transferred after they resettled in 1856 to Norfolk Island (now an Australian external territory).[20]
The emergence of modern democracy generally began with male citizens obtaining the right to vote in advance of female citizens, except in the Kingdom of Hawai'i, where universal suffrage was introduced in 1840 without mention of sex; however, a constitutional amendment in 1852 rescinded female voting and put property qualifications on male voting.[21]
The seed for the first Woman's Rights Convention in the United States in Seneca Falls, New York, was planted in 1840, when Elizabeth Cady Stanton met Lucretia Mott at the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London. The conference refused to seat Mott and other women delegates from the U.S. because of their sex. In 1851, Stanton met temperance worker Susan B. Anthony, and shortly the two would be joined in the long struggle to secure the vote for women in the U.S. In 1868 Anthony encouraged working women from the printing and sewing trades in New York, who were excluded from men's trade unions, to form Working Women's Associations. As a delegate to the National Labor Congress in 1868, Anthony persuaded the committee on female labor to call for votes for women and equal pay for equal work. The men at the conference deleted the reference to the vote.[22] In the US, women in the Wyoming Territory were permitted to both vote and stand for office in 1869.[23] Subsequent American suffrage groups often disagreed on tactics, with the National American Woman Suffrage Association arguing for a state-by-state campaign and the National Woman's Party focusing on an amendment to the U.S. Constitution.[24][25][26]
The 1840 constitution of the Kingdom of Hawaii established a House of Representatives, but did not specify who was eligible to participate in the election of it. Some academics have argued that this omission enabled women to vote in the first elections, in which votes were cast by means of signatures on petitions; but this interpretation remains controversial.[27] The second constitution of 1852 specified that suffrage was restricted to males over twenty years-old.[21]
In 1849, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, in Italy, was the first European state to have a law that provided for the vote of women, for administrative elections, taking up a tradition that was already informally sometimes present in Italy.
The 1853 Constitution of the province of Vélez in the Republic of New Granada, modern day Colombia, allowed for married women, or women older than the age of 21, the right to vote within the province. However, this law was subsequently annulled by the Supreme Court of the Republic, arguing that the citizens of the province could not have more rights than those already guaranteed to the citizens of the other provinces of the country, thus eliminating female suffrage from this province in 1856.[28][29][30]
In 1881, the Isle of Man, an internally self-governing dependent territory of the British Crown, enfranchised women property owners. With this it provided the first action for women's suffrage within the British Isles.[20]
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.[31]
For countries that have their origins in self-governing colonies but later became independent nations in the 20th century, the Colony of New Zealand was the first to acknowledge women's right to vote in 1893, largely due to a movement led by Kate Sheppard. The British protectorate of Cook Islands rendered the same right in 1893 as well.[32] Another British colony, South Australia, followed in 1895, enacting laws which not only extended voting to women, but also made women eligible to stand for election to its parliament.[33][34][36]
20th century
French pro-suffrage poster, 1934, whose message begins: "In all the great countries of Europe, women vote or want to vote; French women do not vote! French women want to vote!"
Following the federation of the British colonies in Australia in 1901, the new federal government enacted the Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902 which allowed female British subjects to vote and stand for election on the same terms as men. However, many indigenous Australians remained excluded from voting federally until 1962.[37]
The first place in Europe to introduce women's suffrage was the Grand Duchy of Finland in 1906, and it also became the first place in continental Europe to implement racially-equal suffrage for women.[38][39] As a result of the 1907 parliamentary elections, Finland's voters elected 19 women as the first female members of a representative parliament. This was one of many self-governing actions in the Russian autonomous province that led to conflict with the Russian governor of Finland, ultimately leading to the creation of the Finnish nation in 1917.
In the years before World War I, women in Norway also won the right to vote. During WWI, Denmark, Russia (under the Provisional Government), Germany, and Poland also recognized women's right to vote.
Canada gave right to vote to some women in 1917; women got the vote on the same basis as men in 1920, that is, men and women of certain races or status being excluded from voting until 1960, when universal adult suffrage was achieved.[40]
A Bermuda Police Sergeant confiscates women's suffrage activist Gladys Morrell's table in the 1930s.
The Representation of the People Act 1918 saw British women over 30 gain the vote. Dutch women won the passive vote (allowed to run for parliament) after a revision of the Dutch Constitution in 1917 and the active vote (electing representatives) in 1919, and American women on August 26, 1920, with the passage of the 19th Amendment (the Voting Rights Act of 1965 secured voting rights for racial minorities). Irish women won the same voting rights as men in the Irish Free State constitution, 1922. In 1928, British women won suffrage on the same terms as men, that is, for ages 21 and older. The suffrage of Turkish women was introduced in 1930 for local elections and in 1934 for national elections.
By the time French women were granted the suffrage in July 1944 by Charles de Gaulle's government in exile, by a vote of 51 for, 16 against,[41] France had been for about a decade the only Western country that did not at least allow women's suffrage at municipal elections.[42]
Voting rights for women were introduced into international law by the United Nations' Human Rights Commission, whose elected chair was Eleanor Roosevelt. In 1948 the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; Article 21 stated: "(1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives. (3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures."
The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Political Rights of Women, which went into force in 1954, enshrining the equal rights of women to vote, hold office, and access public services as set out by national laws.
21st century
One of the most recent jurisdictions to acknowledge women's full right to vote was Bhutan in 2008 (its first national elections).[43] Most recently, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, after both national and international condemnation and activism by feminist groups, granted Saudi women the vote and right to run for office for the first time in the 2015 local elections.[44][45]
Suffrage movements
See also: Women's suffrage by country
After selling her home, British activist Emmeline Pankhurst travelled constantly, giving speeches throughout Britain and the United States. One of her most famous speeches, Freedom or death, was delivered in Connecticut in 1913.
The suffrage movement was a broad one, made up of women and men with a wide range of views. In terms of diversity, the greatest achievement of the 20th-century woman suffrage movement was its extremely broad class base.[46] One major division, especially in Britain, was between suffragists, who sought to create change constitutionally, and suffragettes, led by English political activist Emmeline Pankhurst, who in 1903 formed the more militant Women's Social and Political Union.[47] Pankhurst would not be satisfied with anything but action on the question of women's enfranchisement, with "deeds, not words" the organization's motto.[48][49]
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott were the first two women in America to organize the women's rights convention in July 1848. Susan B. Anthony later joined the movement and helped form the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) in May 1869. Their goal was to change the 15th Amendment because it did not mention nor include women which is why the NWSA protested against it. Around the same time, there was also another group of women who supported the 15th amendment and they called themselves American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). The American Woman 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.[50] The two groups united became one and called themselves the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA).[50]
Throughout the world, the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), which was established in the United States in 1873, campaigned for women's suffrage, in addition to ameliorating the condition of prostitutes.[51][52] Under the leadership of Frances Willard, "the WCTU became the largest women's organization of its day and is now the oldest continuing women's organization in the United States."[53]
There was also a diversity of views on a "woman's place". Suffragist themes often included the notions that women were naturally kinder and more concerned about children and the elderly. As Kraditor shows, it was often assumed that women voters would have a civilizing effect on politics, opposing domestic violence, liquor, and emphasizing cleanliness and community. An opposing theme, Kraditor argues, held that women had the same moral standards. They should be equal in every way and that there was no such thing as a woman's "natural role".[54][55]
For Black women in the United States, achieving suffrage was a way to counter the disfranchisement of the men of their race.[56] Despite this discouragement, black suffragists continued to insist on their equal political rights. Starting in the 1890s, African American women began to assert their political rights aggressively from within their own clubs and suffrage societies.[57] "If white American women, with all their natural and acquired advantages, need the ballot," argued Adella Hunt Logan of Tuskegee, Alabama, "how much more do black Americans, male and female, need the strong defense of a vote to help secure their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?"[56]
Explanations for suffrage extensions
Scholars have proposed different theories for variations in the timing of women's suffrage across countries. 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.[58][59] According to Adam Przeworski, women's suffrage tends to be extended in the aftermath of major wars.[58]
Impact
Scholars have linked women's suffrage to subsequent economic growth,[60] the rise of the welfare state,[61][62][63] and less international conflict.[64]
Timeline
See also: Timeline of women's suffrage, Timeline of women's legal rights (other than voting), and Timeline of first women's suffrage in majority-Muslim countries
Grant of female suffrage at national level
In religion
Catholicism
The Pope is elected by cardinals.[125] Women are not appointed as cardinals, and therefore, women cannot vote for the Pope.[126]
The female Catholic office of Abbess is elective, the choice being made by the secret votes of nuns belonging to the community.[127] The high rank ascribed to abbesses within the Catholic Church formerly permitted some abbesses the right to sit and vote at national assemblies – as with various high-ranking abbesses in Medieval Germany, who were ranked among the independent princes of the empire. Their Protestant successors enjoyed the same privilege almost into modern times.[9]
On 6 February 2021, Pope Francis appointed Nathalie Becquart an undersecretary of the Synod of Bishops,[128] making her the first woman to have the right to vote in the Synod of Bishops.[129]
On 26 April 2023, Pope Francis announced that women would be allowed to vote at the Sixteenth Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops,[130] marking the first time women were allowed to vote at any Synod of Bishops.[131] Approximately 54 women voted.[132]
Islam
See also: Women in Islam
In some countries, some mosques have constitutions prohibiting women from voting in board elections.[133]
Judaism
See also: Women in Judaism
In Conservative Judaism, Reform Judaism, and most Orthodox Jewish movements, women have the right to vote. Since the 1970s, more and more Modern Orthodox synagogues and religious organizations have been granting women the right to vote and to be elected to their governing bodies. In a few Ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities, women are denied the vote or the ability to be elected to positions of authority.[134][135][136]
In the United States, Jewish women were hugely participatory in the suffrage movement. American Jewish support started in the mid-1800s but grew significantly at the turn of the twentieth century due to Jewish immigration from Europe. Jewish suffragists faced antisemitism and xenophobia from anti-suffragists and suffragists alike. By the time of the Nineteenth Amendment, a majority of American Jews supported suffrage.[137]
Ernestine Rose was a Polish American suffragist who worked closely with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. She is sometimes referred to as "the first Jewish feminist" though she had renounced Judaism at an early age and was an active atheist.[137]
See also
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