In 1971, Rep. Bella Abzug (D-NY) asked the U.S. Congress to designate a Women’s Equality Day. It slowly won support, and they granted it in 1973. They chose the date of August 26 to commemorate the August 26, 1920 certification of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. IMHO, every country should have a Women’s Equality Day. It should be a day we all observe because women’s rights have been and continue to be a world-wide struggle. Let’s bring more awareness to this day and to women’s rights.
Feminism Always an Issue
The U.S. education system cannot possibly cover all the history of the world and of the country, so it must pick what to include. Sadly, it doesn’t include enough about the battle for women’s rights.
Historians call the time from the 1840s-1950s First-wave Feminism. A time when the primary concern centered on legal issues, particularly suffrage, the right to vote in political elections. Many seem to think that is the first time women earned the right to vote. It wasn’t.
Here, in the U.S., Margaret Brent, an unmarried woman with property and an attorney, demanded a vote in Maryland’s colonial assembly in 1648. They denied her that right. Read more about Margaret.
The U.S. wasn’t the first place to give women the right to vote. During my brief search, I discovered Fresia (also called Friesland), a province of the Netherlands in the country’s northern part, allowed female landowners to vote in elections in rural districts in 1689. Granted, this was a limited portion of the female population, but it was a start.
One Step Forward, Two Steps Backward
Sweden allowed taxpaying female members of city guilds to vote in local city and national elections in 1718.
By 1734, female Swedish taxpaying property owners of the legal majority could vote in all local countryside elections. This right was never rescinded.
Unfortunately, Sweden rescinded the right to vote in local elections in 1758 and in national elections in 1772.
Corsica, an island in the Mediterranean, allowed women to vote in 1755. When France annexed Corsica, they rescinded the women’s right to vote.
The New Jersey Constitution of 1776 allowed all residents who owned a specific amount of property to vote without gender or race limitations. This meant that married women could not vote because their property became their husband’s property upon their marriage. But unmarried or widowed females, regardless of their race and black men who met the land ownership requirement, could vote. This changed in 1807, when the party in power wished to stay in power, so they changed the wording to specify “free, white, male citizens” could vote.
Women Begin Organizing
Women could attend the 1840 World Antislavery Congress in London, but only as spectators. They could not take part. Elizabeth Cody Stanton and Lucretia Mott, unhappy with the limitations place on them because of their gender, decided to form a society to advocate for women’s rights.
July 19-20, 1848 Elizabeth Lady Stanton and others held “A Women’s Rights Convention” in Seneca, New York. Three hundred people attended, including Frederick Douglass. Sixty-eight women and thirty-two men signed the Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions.
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position different from that which they have hitherto occupied, but one to which the laws of nature and nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes that impel them to such a course.
We hold these truths to be self – evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
For more a story about suffragettes in America, read Leading on a White Horse, the Girl Wants to Vote.
Forward and Back Again
In 1853, the Province of Vélez in the Republic of New Granada (in what is now Columbia) granted universal voting rights to men and women. Then a few years later, the Supreme Court annulled women’s right to vote.
The Civil War in the United States brought women’s rights advocacy to a halt in 1860 until the war ended in 1865.
The Australian colony of South Australia gave property-owning women the right to vote in 1861.
One year later, Sweden allowed women of legal age, unmarried or widowed, who owned land or paid a sufficient amount of taxes to vote in first chamber municipal elections. They could not vote for second chamber positions.
About the same time, in San Juan Province of Argentina, literate women could vote in local elections only.
In 1863, the Grand Duchy of Finland (an autonomous state ruled by the Russian Empire) limited taxpaying women to voting only in municipal elections. A few years later, they extended the right to taxpaying women in cities.
On September 19, 1893, New Zealand became the first self-governing country in the world to allow women to vote in parliamentary elections. Women could not run for an elected office until 1919.
Amendments in the U.S. Omitted Women
The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1867, stated “all persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” That right could not be denied “to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States.” Senator S. C. Pomeroy of Kansas introduced a women’s suffrage amendment but Congress rejected it.
By 1869, the states ratified the 15th Amendment. That amendment states, “The rights 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 arc, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
The Territory of Wyoming became part of the United States, with full suffrage for women that same year.
Victory Woodhull appeared before the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives and argued that the 14th Amendment gave women the right to vote. The committee rejected that argument.
Prominent women formed the Anti-Suffrage Party and opposed giving women the right to vote. They believed women’s participation in politics threatened their roles as wives, mothers, educators, and philanthropists.
Susan B. Anthony registered to vote and voted for Ulysses S. Grant for president in 1871. They arrested and tried her. Her defense that the 14th Amendment gave her the right to vote was unsuccessful. She was convicted in 1873 and sentenced to pay a $100 fine and court costs.
That year, the Supreme Court ruled that the 14th Amendment did not guarantee women the right to vote. Citizenship does not give voting rights and women’s voting rights fall under individual states’ jurisdictions.
The Women’s Suffrage Amendment was introduced to Congress in 1877.
The World Marches Forward
South Australia granted universal suffrage to all women in 1894.
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland gave single women the right to vote in local elections, then extend that to some married women.
Denmark joined the women’s suffrage movement, forming the Danske Kvindeforeningers Valgretsforbund (the Danish Women’s Society’s Suffrage Union).
Western Australia gave women the right to vote in 1899, but “Aboriginal natives of Australia, Asia or Africa” and people of mixed descent had to own land at least at £100 (which excluded virtually all of them).
In the early 1900s, more and more countries gave women the right to vote. Some continued to have restrictions, others gave women the right to vote at the federal level. Twenty countries formally allowed women to vote in national elections before the U.S. granted women the right to vote. Almost half of those countries were under Russian or Soviet control.
Lifting Restrictions on Women’s Right to Vote
Many countries, including the U.S., initially restricted women’s rights based on race, age, education level, or marital status. Lifting those restrictions often took decades.
In the U.S., it took more than four decades after the ratification of the 19th Amendment before the Voting Rights Act of 1965 passed to prevent state and local voting restrictions from keeping Black Americans from voting.
Canada excluded Asian and Indigenous Canadians from voting until the 1940s and 1960s, respectively.
More than 60 years passed between White women getting the right to vote in 1930 and Black women winning those rights in 1993.
Only women married to a male voter or women with specific literacy qualifications could vote in India after 1935. It wasn’t until 1950 that all women in India had the right to vote.
In Iceland, men could vote at age 25. But when women gained the right to vote in 1915, they had to be over 40 years of age to vote. They lowered the voting age for women to 25 in 1920.
On August 18, 1920, the States ratified the 19th Amendment. It guarantees “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any sate on account of sex.”
The Struggle Continues
Women in the United Arab Emirates and in Vatican City cannot vote today. In other countries, social stigmas and other restrictions continue to affect women’s voting access and rights. Literacy and accessibility remain issues that prevent voters from exercising their right to vote in most countries, including the United States.
Women’s Equality Day
No matter what country you live in, take a moment today and remember the struggle of our sisters before us. Remember the struggle of our sisters around us. Voting is a duty, an honor, and a privilege to be exercised and never taken for granted.
Did you know about Women’s Equality Day? How will you commemorate this?