When did women gain the right to vote?

1893: New Zealand

1906: Finland

1913: Norway, Denmark

1918: Great Britain, Germany, Austria, USSR, Sweden

1920: USA

1931: Spain

1944/45: France, Italy

1971: Switzerland

1984: Liechtenstein

In Britain the law-abiding National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies had 300,000 members in 1912, and the “militant” Women’s Social and Political Union, 50,000

British suffragist poster, ca. 1906

A WSPU rally, ca. 1908

WSPU activists arrested in 1906 for marching on Parliament

Emmeline Pankhurst arrested outside Buckingham Palace

Picture of her prison cell, 1911

The gradual decline in birthrates and rise in

life expectancy nurtured the idea that women should be able

to combine motherhood and a

career

THE FINDINGS OF JOAN SCOTT & LOUISE TILLY FOR FRANCE

The French Union for Women’s Suffrage

(founded in 1909) had 12,000 members in

1914:“French Women Want

the Vote:Against alcohol, slums, and war”

Delegates to the Women’s Suffrage Congress in Munich, 1912

“Women’s Dreams about the Marriage of the Future” (1908)

“Give Us Women’s Suffrage!”

Poster for the SPD-sponsored

International Women’s Day on

March 8, 1914

Women in a German shell factory, 1916/17

German women at work in a

munitions factory,

1916.High wages and

government propaganda lured women into jobs they had never

held before, such as lathe operator

and munitions worker

“A New Berlin Street Scene from Wartime: Women Window Cleaners Exercise their Trade in Men’s Clothing” (1917)

Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg founded the Spartacus League in 1917, proclaimed a “Soviet

Republic” on November 9, 1918, and then founded the German Communist Party.

A Frenchwoman operates a lathe

in a metalworking factory

J. Barnard Davis, “The Workroom of the Gerrard’s Cross War Hospital Supply Depot” (1918)

Workers in a British shell factory, 1918

E.F. Skinner, “For King and Country” (ca. 1917)

Women miners haul clay to be fired into bricks in Wales

“On Her their Lives Depend”(recruitment poster for the

British munitions industry, ca.

1916)

“Preserve Perishable Produce”

(Food Production

Department, London, 1917/18)

H.G. Gawthorn, “National Service Women’s Land

Army,” Great Britain,

1917

Albert Sterner, “We need you,”

USA, 1918

“We give our work, our men, our lives if need be. Will you give us the Vote?”

USA, 1917

“The Glorious Dead”

(the Cenotaph in Whitehall, London,

designed by Sir Edward Lutyens, built in 1919/20)