Votes for Women Around the World

Women won the vote at different times for different reasons. In some places, such as South Australia (1894) and Finland (1906), reformers linked suffrage to broader democratic change; Finland was also the first country to let women stand for parliament, electing 19 women in 1907. Revolutions and wars brought rapid change: Soviet Russia granted women the vote in 1917, Germany in 1918, and many European countries after the First World War. Elsewhere change came late: France granted women the vote in 1944, Italy in 1946 and Japan in 1945–46.

Newly independent India adopted universal adult suffrage in its 1950 constitution, enfranchising women and men together. Switzerland granted women the national vote only in 1971 after a referendum of male voters, and Saudi Arabian women first voted in municipal elections in 2015. These patterns show that suffrage depended on political crises, nationalism, religious and social traditions, and the strength of women's organizations.