Timeline of women's suffrage

Women's suffrage – the right of women to vote – has been achieved at various times in countries throughout the world. In many nations, women's suffrage was granted before universal suffrage, in which cases women and men from certain socioeconomic classes or races were still unable to vote. Some countries granted suffrage to both sexes at the same time. This timeline lists years when women's suffrage was enacted. Some countries are listed more than once, as the right was extended to more women according to age, land ownership, etc. In many cases, the first voting took place in a subsequent year.

Some women (based on property ownership) in the Isle of Man (geographically part of the British Isles but not part of the United Kingdom) gained the right to vote in 1881.^[1]^[2]

New Zealand was the first self-governing country in the world in which all women had the right to vote in parliamentary elections; from 1893.^[3] However women could not stand for election to parliament until 1919, when three women stood (unsuccessfully); see 1919 in New Zealand.

The colony of South Australia allowed women to both vote and stand for election in 1895.^[4] In Sweden, conditional women's suffrage was granted during the Age of Liberty between 1718 and 1772.^[5] But it was not until the year 1919 that equality was achieved, where women's votes were valued the same as men's.

The Australian Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902 enabled female British subjects resident in Australia to vote at federal elections and also permitted them to stand for election to the Australian Parliament, making the newly-federated country of Australia the first in the modern world to do so. However, the act excluded "natives of Australia, Asia, Africa and the Pacific Islands (other than New Zealand)". Two states either effectively or explicitly excluded indigenous Australians.

In 1906, the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland, which later became the Republic of Finland, was the first country in the world to give all women and all men both the right to vote and the right to run for office. Finland was also the first country in Europe to give women the right to vote.^[6]^[7] The world's first female members of parliament were elected in Finland the following year.

In Europe, the last jurisdiction to grant women the right to vote was the Swiss canton of Appenzell Innerrhoden (AI), in 1991. Appenzell Innerrhoden is the smallest Swiss canton with around 14,100 inhabitants in 1990.^[8] Women in Switzerland obtained the right to vote at federal level in 1971,^[9] and at local cantonal level between 1959 and 1972, except for Appenzell in 1989/1990,^[10] see Women's suffrage in Switzerland.