Suffrage Movement

Suffrage movement meaning

When using the word suffrage, we mean the right to vote in public elections or referendums. Suffrage ensures representation and allows participation in your country's political life.

Why do you think suffrage is important?

In democracies, suffrage ensures that a government is representative of the people it governs. Therefore, within democratic structures, universal suffrage is considered to be one of the foundational elements which informs the wider political system.

Given the significance of suffrage within democracies, suffrage is not just a privilege but considered an inalienable right protected in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Suffrage movement's main goal

The main goal of the suffrage movement is to achieve universal suffrage on the basis of equality between all human beings. But it took humanity a long time and a lot of struggles to safeguard this fundamental right.

Let's have a closer look at categories of people who, despite being excluded in the past, are today able to vote. Then, we'll shift our gaze to some categories of people who, still today, are, in some circumstances, excluded from voting.

Historic suffrage limitations

• Gender

As far back as the first democracies in Ancient Greece, gender has been a reason for exclusion from suffrage. In Ancient Athens, for example only adult, male landowners were allowed to vote.

However, history has seen matriarchal societies too, some of which still exist today. In a matriarchal society, such as the First Nations Iroquois society in Canada and the Akan people in Ghana, women, rather than men, are the leading force in all the main elements of society: social, political and economic.

• Ethnic Background

In countries with ethnic minorities, these have historically been excluded from voting, either directly through legislation, or indirectly through the application of property or literacy requirements, or through intimidation.

• Religion

After the Reformation, many European countries excluded people adhering to minority religious denominations from voting and standing for office. Even in more recent times, some minority religions have been excluded from political life, for example, the first constitution of Romania (1866) allowed only Christians to be citizens.

• Wealth

Property qualifications have been used historically to exclude poor people from voting. In some countries, people were charged to be able to cast a vote, thereby excluding those who couldn't afford it.

• Education

In many states, up to relatively modern times, a certain level of education or a literacy test was required to be allowed to vote. This was often an indirect way to exclude disadvantaged minorities from the vote.

• Health

People who were hospitalised in psychiatric wards were historically excluded from voting.

Modern suffrage limitations

• Residency/Naturalisation

Modern countries differ when it comes to whether immigrants are entitled to the vote. Residency doesn't always allow the right to vote in national elections though it can allow individuals to vote in local elections. Naturalisation will sometimes exclude people from voting in their new country for a number of years.

• Age

All modern countries have a minimum age requirement to be allowed to vote. Minimum ages vary from 16-21. Demeny voting has been introduced in some countries. Demeny voting is when parents can vote on behalf of their underage children.

Across the globe, there is an ongoing suffrage movement to lower voting ages to ensure greater representation of young people's voices in political systems.

• Criminality

Most convicted individuals maintain the right to vote. However, in some countries, when convicted of some serious or specific crimes the right to vote can still be denied.

Women's suffrage movement

The women's suffrage movement is the political movement that campaigned and fought for the right of women to vote.

In the United Kingdom, the women's suffrage movement was formalised by the creation of the National Union for Women Suffrage Society (NUWSS), founded by Millicent Fawcett in 1897 and the more militant Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) founded in 1903 by Emmeline Pankhurst and her two daughters Christabel and Sylvia.

The NUWSS focused on legal methods of campaigning and awareness-raising and were referred to as the suffragists.

The WSPU escalated the campaign through more violent methods such as shouting down speakers, damaging property, and hunger strikes and were referred to as the suffragettes.

Arguably, the WSPU's methods attracted more media attention while being detrimental to the cause. Both campaigns slowed down at the outbreak of World War I, though the NUWSS continued peaceful lobbying.

The women's suffrage movement period

Formally the women's suffrage movement lasted from the mid-19th century up to its success in achieving suffrage in 1918. However, the novelist and philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft wrote A Vindication to the Rights of Woman, earlier than this, in 1872. Here she argued for women's emancipation on rationalistic grounds. She put special emphasis on the importance of education and on women's capacity to attain it.

Fig. 2 Mary Wollstonecraft

Causes and Effects of the women's suffrage movement

The women's suffrage movement was caused by the social inequalities between men and women inherent in many western countries in the 18th and 19th centuries. It was catalysed into action by the liberal thoughts that emerged from the Enlightenment age.

During the first World War, due to a shortage of male workers who had been conscripted, many women were employed to fill in the employment gaps. The fact that women were able to carry out traditionally male roles, was further proof of equality between the sexes.

The pressure this put on the UK Government, coupled with the campaigning and activism that predated the war led to the passing of the Representation of the People Act in 1918.

Ten years later, in 1928, the Equal Franchise Act was passed, granting suffrage on equal terms to all men and women over the age of 21.

The main effect of the success of the suffrage movement was that women's expectations of themselves, and of womanhood in general, were raised. Women saw themselves, and society saw women, as being able to pursue different life paths and engage actively in Parliamentary politics.