BirthME, Doulas

]Bangladesh gave women the right to vote in 1971, after women fought alongside men in the Liberation War, helping the country to gain independence. But universal suffrage only really came into play after India gained independence in 1947, and when the Indian constitution was enacted in 1950. © YASSER AL-ZAYYAT/AFP via Getty Images The year 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the passing of the While the United States was one of the earlier countries to grant the vote, they were by no means the first, with countries such as New Zealand and Australia leading the way in equal rights for women.

© Touring Club Italiano/Marka/Universal Images Group via Getty Images © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis via Getty Images It was finally in 1946 that women in France won the right to vote. ]The fight for women’s suffrage in Canada spanned across the provinces, and women fought for decades for the right to vote. ]Suffragette groups in Britain spent years campaigning, marching, rallying, and protesting before women won the right to vote. The country has progressed exponentially since that time, and today more than 40% of national political seats are held by women. More than 13 million women voted in 1946, the first general election after World War II. ]Colombian dictator Gustavo Rojas Pinilla granted women the right to vote in 1954, despite opposition from the Catholic Church. © Keystone-France/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images [Pictured: Women stand with posters before the landmark February 1971 election.

© Seidel/United Archives/Universal Images Group via Getty Images Swiss women won the right to vote in federal elections in 1971. However, a few didn't allow women to vote in local elections until the late '80s, and the state of Appenzell Innerrhoden didn't allow women to vote in local elections until 1991. ]Morocco granted women the right to vote in 1963, but women weren’t appointed to any political seats until 1997. French women didn’t get the right to vote until 1944, 24 years after American women slipped their first ballots in the box. ]Women were able to start participating in municipal elections as of 1947, but the right to vote in national elections didn’t come until six years later, in 1953. Once the battle for women’s education was underway, women’s right to vote was included in the broader feminist movement. Despite this, women had to continue fighting for equal rights and are still [Pictured: Woman vote in an election in Algeria on Feb. 5, 1967.

Since then, women have become more prominent in politics, although they still only represent [Pictured: Hatoyama Ichiro, former head of the pro-American Liberal Party, is shown with his wife as they cast their ballots in Japan's National Election in 1952. ]Suffrage for women in South Africa began in 1899, with the founding of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, the first group to campaign for [Pictured: A scenic view of Cape Town, South Africa, circa 1930. Check out the timeline and see when women around the world earned the right to vote.Led by suffrage activist Kate Sheppard, the women of New Zealand [Pictured: The National Council of Women in Christchurch, New Zealand, 1896. © DANIEL MIHAILESCU/AFP via Getty Images © Royal Danish Library // Wikimedia Commons ]Women in Moldova won the right to vote in 1993, under universal suffrage, but there were no gender quotas for political seats until a new law in 2016. Norway’s parliament first Iceland’s first political women’s group, The Icelandic Women’s Association, was formed in 1894. As of 2019, women occupied 25% of political seats in Iraq, and women continue to run for office, working to increase their political quotas.Women in Namibia won the right to vote in 1989, after a campaign that was tied to universal suffrage rights and Samoa, originally known as Western Samoa, gave women the right to vote under universal suffrage in 1990.

[Pictured: A woman casts her vote in a polling station in Almaty, Kazakhstan on Dec. 4, 2005.
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Activist Clara Zetkin was one of the most well-known leaders of the movement who campaigned to develop the women’s movement and organized the first international women’s conference. In 2005, after multiple demonstrations and public rallies, the [Pictured: Kuwaitis protest for women political rights in front of the parliament on May 16, 2005, in Kuwait City. Women continued to campaign for suffrage, and in 1999 a decree was issued by the emir, but was again overturned.