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Today most of us assume that we are all entitled to vote in our country's elections as soon as we've reached the right age. But has it always been this way? The short answer is a big "NO!"
This article will look into the concept of suffrage and the suffrage movement. Firstly, we will explore the historic reasons people haven't been able to participate in elections in the past. We will then focus on the Women's suffrage movement and its causes and effects.
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.
Suffrage
The right to vote in a public election or referendum.
From the 15th to the 19th century, voting in Britain depended on ownership of a freehold property worth at least 40 shillings per year. Those who owned multiple properties in multiple boroughs, ( mainly men, but in some cases women too) were entitled to one vote for each of the boroughs where their properties were located.
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.
Today in the UK, general elections typically take place every 5 years. These elections allow the UK voting population to elect Members of Parliament (MPs) to represent them and act on their behalf to make political changes.
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.
Article 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) is the right to participate in government and states that "the will of the people shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage."1
Fig. 1 The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The main goal of the suffrage movement is to achieve universal suffrage on the basis of平等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.
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.
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.
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.
宗教改革
A 16th-century religious movement that challenged the authority of the Catholic Church.
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.
The Brazilian constitution of 1824 allowed all men over 25 to vote only if they had a yearly income over a certain amount.
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.
According to the Civil Rights act of 1964 (USA), to qualify for federal elections citizens had to submit a literacy test in writing and had to have had at least 6 years of formal education.
People who were hospitalised in psychiatric wards were historically excluded from voting.
In 1972, on the Creedmore Hospital grounds (N.Y.), the Queens Board of Election set up a polling site, thereby reinstating the right to vote for psychiatric patients.
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.
Residency
Defines the country where somebody usually resides, even if they weren't born there (i.e. they are not citizens of that country).
Naturalisation
Is the legal process by which someone born in a different country, gains citizenship in a new country.
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.
For instance, the Youth Rights movement includes campaigns to lower the minimum voting age in the US.
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.
Examples are convictions for a felony (USA), or a crime against the electoral system (France or Germany).
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 theNational 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 peacefullobbying.
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 wroteA 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.
Rationalismis the school of thought at the basis ofLiberalism, Rationalists hold all knowledge can be attained through logical thought and that human beings are inherently rational creatures, able to think and decide for themselves.
Liberalismis thepolitical philosophybased on the freedom of individuals, protected by the rights recognised by the state.
Liberalism emerged from the age of Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries. Mary Wollstonecraft's thinking is considered the origin of liberal feminism, which is based on the inherent rationality of women and on the equal distribution (between men and women) of legal and political rights as well as civil liberties.
Fig. 2 Mary Wollstonecraft
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平等between the sexes.
The pressure this put on theUK Government, coupled with the campaigning and activism that predated the war led to the passing of the Representation of the People Act in 1918.
The 1918 Representation of the People Act granted the right to vote to some women over the age of 30. In 1918, this change meant 8.5 million women in the UK were able to vote.
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.
The causes of the women's suffrage movement were the inequality in society between men and women and the liberal thinking of the Enlightenment age. The effects of the women's suffrage movement was suffrage for women and a shift toward equality between men and women.
The suffrage movement is the movement that fought for universal suffrage.
The suffrage movement started with the Enlightenment ideas that all humans are equal and therefore have the same rights.
The main goal of the suffrage movement is universal suffrage.
The women's suffrage movement started with the thinking of Mary Wollstonecraft.
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