Women's Suffrage
Updated August 5, 2020 |
Infoplease Staff
 Saudi women vote for the first time |
When and where did women earn the right to vote?
Learn the year in which women's suffrage was granted, organized by year. New Zealand was the first country to allow women to vote (in 1893), while the King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia granted women the right to vote in 2011. The United States finally began allowing women to vote in 1920, after the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution.
- 1893 New Zealand
- 1902 Australia1
- 1906 Finland
- 1913 Norway
- 1915 Denmark
- 1917 Canada2
- 1918 Austria, Germany, Poland, Russia
- 1919 Netherlands
- 1920 United States
- 1921 Sweden
- 1928 Britain, Ireland
- 1930 South Africa3
- 1931 Spain
- 1934 Turkey
- 1944 France
- 1945 Italy
- 1947 Argentina, Japan, Mexico, Pakistan
- 1949 China
- 1950 India
- 1954 Colombia
- 1957 Malaysia, Zimbabwe
- 1962 Algeria
- 1963 Iran, Morocco
- 1964 Libya
- 1967 Ecuador
- 1971 Switzerland
- 1972 Bangladesh
- 1974 Jordan
- 1976 Portugal
- 1989 Namibia
- 1990 Western Samoa
- 1993 Kazakhstan, Moldova
- 2005 Kuwait
- 2006 United Arab Emirates
- 2011 Saudi Arabia4
NOTE: One country does not allow their people, male or female, to vote: Brunei.
1. Australian women, with the exception of aboriginal women, won the vote in 1902. Aborigines, male and female, did not have the right to vote until 1962.
2. Canadian women, with the exception of Canadian Indian women, won the vote in 1917. Canadian Indians, male and female, did not win the vote until 1960. Source: The New York Times, May 22, 2005.
3. South African women won equal voting rights in 1930; however, the voting was restricted to just white people until limited suffrage was offered to other non-black racial groups in the 1950s. Black citizens would not have full voting rights until the end of Apartheid in the 1990s.
4. King Abdullah issued a decree in 2011 ordering that women be allowed to stand as candidates and vote in municipal elections, but their first opportunity did not come until Dec. 2015, almost a year after the king's death in January.
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