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Essay on Women's Right to Vote

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Women's suffrage refers to the right of women to participate in democratic processes through voting on the same basis as men. In the medieval and early modern periods in Europe, the right to vote was typically severely limited for all people by factors such as age, ownership of property, and gender. The development of the modern democratic state has been characterized internationally by the erosion of these various limitations following periods of collective struggle. Women's suffrage has been achieved as part of this process of modernization at different times in different national contexts, although very few nations granted women the right to vote in elections before the twentieth century (Freedman, pp. 63).
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Following the failure of his attempt to amend the 1867 Reform Act to allow women's suffrage, a number of regional women's suffrage societies were established, culminating in the creation of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies in 1897 (Freedman, pp. 89). In 1903, Emmeline Pankhurst and others broke away from the National Union and established the Women's Social and Political Union, the “suffragettes,” who deployed much more confrontational forms of political campaigning, including demonstrations, hunger strikes, and vandalism of property.
In 1918, after World War I, women over 30 were granted the vote in national elections, and in the Representation of the People Act of 1928, women in the United Kingdom were finally granted the vote on the same terms as men. New Zealand has some claim to be the first nation to allow women the right to vote on an equal basis to men; having done so in 1893, it was ahead of all presently existing independent countries. Australia followed closely behind, establishing women's suffrage in 1902, while Finland granted women the right to vote in 1905 (McElroy, pp. 163). Throughout the twentieth century, women across the globe gradually gained access to the right to vote. The length and intensity of campaigns to secure women's right to vote across this period indicates something of the strength of resistance to women's suffrage. The reasons for this are

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