During the 19th Century women began to agitate for the right to vote and participate in government and law making.The ideals of women's suffrage developed alongside that of universal suffrage and today women's suffrage is considered a right (under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women).[citation needed] During the 19th Century the right to vote was gradually extended in many countries and women started to campaign for their right to vote. In 1893 New Zealand became the first country to give women the right to vote on a national level. Australia gave women the right to vote in 1902, while the USA, Britain and Canada gave women the vote after the First World War Sweden would also be a contestant as the first independent nation to grant women the right to vote. Conditional female suffrage was granted in Sweden during the age of liberty (1718–1771)In Britain women's suffrage gained attention when John Stuart Mill called for the inclusion of women's suffrage in the Reform Act of 1867 in a petition that he presented to ParliamentInitially only one of several women’s rights campaign, suffrage became the primary cause of the British women’s movement at the beginning of the 20th Century At the time the ability to vote was restricted to wealthy property owners within British jurisdictions. This arrangement implicitly excluded women as property law and marriage law gave men ownership rights at marriage or inheritance until the 19th century. Although male suffrage broadened during the century, women were explicitly prohibited from voting nationally and locally in the 1830s by a Reform Act and the Municipal Corporations Act.[29] Throughout the 19th century women had organised through various groups until, by 1903, the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies and the Women's Social and Political Union had emerged. Leaders in the struggle were Millicent Fawcett and Emmeline Pankhurst with her daughter Christabel. In 1918 the British Parliament passed a bill allowing women over the age of 30 to vote, and the voting age for women was lowered to 21 in 1928
The Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 formulated the demand for women's suffrage in the United States of America and after the American Civil War (1861–1865) agitation for the cause became more prominent. In 1869 the proposed Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which gave the vote to black men, caused controversy as women's suffrage campaigners such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton refused to endorse the amendment, as it did not give the vote to women. Others, such as Lucy Stone and Julia Ward Howe however argued that black men were enfranchised, women would achieve their goal. The conflict caused two organisations to emerge, the National Woman Suffrage Association, which campaigned for women's suffrage at a federal level as well as for married women to be given property rights, and the American Woman Suffrage Association, which aimed to secure women's suffrage through state legislation. In 1920 the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution gave women the right to vote
Soviet poster celebrates women's right to vote and to be elected.Nordic countries gave women the right to vote in the early 20th Century – Finland (1906), Norway (1913), Denmark and Iceland (1915). With the end of the First World War many other countries followed - the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the Netherlands (1917), Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Sweden (1918), Germany and Lunenburg (1919). Spain gave women the right to vote in 1931, France in 1944, Belgium, Italy, Romania and Yugoslavia in 1946. Switzerland gave women the right to vote in 1971, and Liechtenstein in 1984.
In Canada women's suffrage was achieved first on a provincial level in Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan on 1916, with federal suffrage being granted in 1918. In Latin America some countries gave women the right to vote in the first half of the 20th Century – Ecuador (1929), Brazil (1932), El Salvador (1939), Dominican Republic (1942), Guatemala (1956) and Argentina (1946). In India, under colonial rule, universal suffrage was granted in 1935. Other Asian countries gave women the right to vote in mid of the Century – Japan (1945), China (1947) and Indonesia (1955). In Africa women generally got the right to vote along with men through universal suffrage – Liberia (1947), Uganda (1958) and Nigeria (1960). In many countries in the Middle East universal suffrage was acquired after the Second World War, although in others, such as Kuwait, suffrage is very limited and still excludes women.
