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 lawabiding 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 SPDsponsored
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)