Shauna Hammer, age 13, of Sparks, Nev., for her question:a
WHAT IS WOMAN SUFFRAGE?
Woman suffrage generally means women's right to vote in political affairs. Although women always helped manage the affairs of society and a few had been leaders, as the democracies were emerging and growing several hundred years ago, women usually had no voting rights.
In the American colonies, some women were taxpayers and were able to vote under colonial laws, except in New York and Virginia. The Revolutionary War inspired liberal thought on women's rights, but the Continental Congress left decisions on suffrage to the states.
Only the New Jersey constitution gave women the right to vote. But the state took the right away in 1807. New conditions in the 1830s caused women to agitate for the right to vote. The factory system created a labor force that included women.
Men who fought for temperance reforms, education, religious liberal is abolition of slavery needed the help of women and in return helped them to be heard on public issues.
A small meeting held at Seneca Falls, N.Y., in 1848, has been called the first woman suffrage convention in the United States. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott led the meeting and it excited much public discussion.
Even more important was a women's rights convention called by Lucy Stone and organized by Paulina Wright Davis at Worcester, Mass., in 1850. This was the first national convention on equal rights for women.
Elizabeth Stanton was joined by a woman named Susan B. Anthony in forming the National Woman Suffrage Association in 1869. It opposed Amendment 15 to the Constitution because this amendment gave the vote to Negro men but not to women.
Wyoming gave women the right to vote in 1896 and several other states granted suffrage to women in the 1890s. In 1920, Amendment 19 to the Constitution gave women the vote.
In 1917, when the United States entered World War I, a woman suffrage amendment was submitted to the House of Representatives. By 1919, it had passed both houses of Congress and was soon ratified by the necessary 36 states. In August of 1920, Amendment 19 to the Constitution became law.
Before World War I, several countries had given the vote to women: NewZealand in 1893, Finland in 1906, Norway in 1907, Australia in 1908 and Denmark and Iceland in 1915.
The war caused many nations to give women the vote. Russia did so in 1917. Canada, Germany, Luxembourg and Poland followed in 1918 and India, Austria, Czechoslovakia and The Netherlands did so in 1919.
Great Britain granted complete woman suffrage in 1928. Other nations fell in line during the 1930s, including Brazil and the Philippines.
World War II speeded up acceptance of woman suffrage by France, Italy, China, Japan and others. In 1975, The United Nations Commission on the Status of Women reported that only eight nations still denied women the right to vote. They were Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Liechtenstein, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen (Sana). In addition, six of the 12 states of Nigeria did not permit women to vote.