60 Fun Facts About Women's Suffrage

Which was the first self-governing country to grant women the vote at national level, in 1893?

Kate Sheppard's petition of nearly 32,000 signatures represented almost a quarter of adult European women there.

Which US territory gave women the vote and the right to stand for office in 1869?

It kept the right on becoming a state in 1890 and is nicknamed the Equality State.

The 1848 Seneca Falls Convention was held in which building?

It ran over two days, 19-20 July, and was advertised as a convention on "the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman".

Which famous abolitionist spoke up at Seneca Falls to keep the demand for the vote in the Declaration of Sentiments?

Even Lucretia Mott had urged that the voting resolution be dropped as too radical.

How many people signed the Declaration of Sentiments at Seneca Falls?

Elizabeth Cady Stanton modelled it on the Declaration of Independence, changing "all men" to "all men and women are created equal".

Where did Elizabeth Cady Stanton first meet Lucretia Mott, planting the seed for Seneca Falls?

The convention refused to seat Mott and the other American women delegates because they were women.

Susan B. Anthony was arrested in 1872 in which city for the crime of voting?

She was convicted but refused to pay the fine, and the authorities let the matter drop.

Which senator introduced the 1878 amendment that became known as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment?

It was rejected in 1887 and not passed by Congress until 1919.

Susan B. Anthony became the first female citizen on US coinage when her portrait appeared on what in 1979?

Her 80th birthday had been celebrated at the White House at President McKinley's invitation.

Why did Stanton and Anthony oppose the Fifteenth Amendment?

The dispute split the movement into the NWSA and the AWSA for more than twenty years.

When Stanton and Anthony's NWSA merged with Lucy Stone's rival AWSA in 1890, what did the united body call itself?

Stanton was its first, largely honorary, president.

Sojourner Truth's famous 1851 speech, later titled "Ain't I a Woman?", was delivered at a women's convention in which Ohio city?

Born into slavery as Isabella Bomefree, she spoke only Dutch until she was nine.

Alice Paul and Lucy Burns organised a huge suffrage procession in Washington, D.C. on 3 March 1913, the day before what event?

Crowds mobbed the marchers and cavalry had to be called in, which won the cause weeks of headlines.

The Silent Sentinels' picket, begun in January 1917, was organised by Alice Paul and which militant suffrage organisation?

More than 2,000 women took part in the vigil, which lasted two and a half years and was the first ever picket of the White House.

Who coined the name "Silent Sentinels" for the White House pickets?

Blatch was Elizabeth Cady Stanton's daughter and had learned militant tactics from the British movement.

When the DC Jail ran out of room for arrested pickets in 1917, where were the women sent?

The site later became the Lorton prison complex; the Lucy Burns Museum opened there in 2020 to commemorate the suffragists held there.

The "Night of Terror", when jailed suffragists were beaten by guards at the Occoquan Workhouse, took place on which date?

Reports of the brutality helped swing public sympathy toward the pickets.

Banners carried by White House pickets in 1917 provoked mob attacks by giving the president what mocking nickname?

The banner asked why he sympathised with un-self-governed Germans while 20 million American women could not vote.

At the 1913 Washington suffrage parade, organisers told journalist Ida B. Wells and other Black suffragists to march where?

Wells refused, waited in the crowd and stepped into the Illinois ranks as they passed.

Which Chicago organisation did Ida B. Wells co-found in January 1913 to advance the vote for Black women?

It also worked to elect African Americans to city offices and paid Wells's way to the Washington parade.

Which state was recorded as the first to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment in June 1919, its messenger reaching Washington ahead of a neighbour that had actually voted an hour earlier?

Delegate David James was handed a statement establishing his state as first.

By what margin did the US Senate finally pass the suffrage amendment on 4 June 1919?

The House had passed it two weeks earlier, and Southern Democrats abandoned a filibuster before the Senate vote.

Which state became the decisive 36th to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment, on 18 August 1920?

The state House approved it by 50 votes to 49, with anti-suffragists trying to reverse the result for days afterwards.

In the decisive 1920 state ratification vote, 24-year-old legislator Harry T. Burn switched to yes after receiving a note from whom?

Febb Burn's letter urged him to be a good boy and help ratify; rumours of bribery followed but nothing was found.

Women's Equality Day is marked on 26 August because on that date in 1920 what happened?

Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby signed the proclamation quietly at his home, with only his secretary present.

In which 1922 case did the US Supreme Court unanimously uphold the validity of the Nineteenth Amendment?

Maryland opponents had argued that the state's constitution limited voting to men.

Which state was the last of those existing in 1920 to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment, doing so only in 1984?

Its ratification was symbolic, since the amendment had been in force for 64 years.

Carrie Chapman Catt founded which organisation on 14 February 1920, six months before ratification, to help the newly enfranchised use their vote?

She had also founded the International Woman Suffrage Alliance in 1904.

Catt's 1916 strategy of combining state campaigns with a push for a federal amendment was known as what?

She unveiled it at the Atlantic City convention and it delivered ratification within four years.

After 1920 Alice Paul devoted herself to which proposal, first sent to Congress in 1923 and nicknamed for Lucretia Mott?

She wrote it with Crystal Eastman; it has still never been added to the Constitution.

While on hunger strike in prison in 1917, Alice Paul was moved to which part of the jail in an attempt to discredit her?

She was force-fed raw eggs through a tube; the doctors found her perfectly sane.

Which three-word phrase from Susan B. Anthony's final birthday speech in 1906 became a watchword of the movement?

A year later a stained-glass window in a Rochester church carried her portrait and the phrase.

The Nineteenth Amendment says the right to vote shall not be denied or abridged "on account of" what?

Its wording mirrors the Fifteenth Amendment, which barred denial on account of race.

The word "suffragette" was coined in 1906 by a journalist writing for which newspaper?

It was meant to belittle the militants, who adopted it with pride.

What was the motto of Emmeline Pankhurst's Women's Social and Political Union, founded in 1903?

The WSPU was an all-women organisation and members were jailed repeatedly for acting on the slogan.

In the suffragette colour scheme designed by Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence in 1908, what did green stand for?

Purple meant loyalty and dignity, white purity, and jewellers soon sold the colours as brooches and pendants.

Millicent Fawcett led which law-abiding organisation, Britain's largest suffragist body, from 1897 to 1919?

Its members were called suffragists to distinguish them from the militant suffragettes.

In 2018 Millicent Fawcett became the first woman honoured with a statue in which London location?

Her banner reads "Courage calls to courage everywhere", from a speech after Emily Davison's death.

The 1913 "Cat and Mouse Act" allowed British authorities to do what with hunger-striking suffragettes?

Its official title was the Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill-Health) Act, and it made hunger striking technically legal.

At the 1913 Epsom Derby, Emily Davison stepped onto the track in front of a horse owned by whom?

The horse, Anmer, was doing about 35 mph; she died of her injuries four days later.

Where did Emily Davison hide overnight on 2 April 1911 to avoid being counted in the census?

Suffragettes boycotted the census on the principle that women who did not count should not be counted.

Emily Davison was force-fed in prison on how many occasions?

She was arrested nine times and went on hunger strike seven times.

Emmeline Pankhurst died on 14 June 1928, only weeks before what?

The Equal Franchise Act took effect on 2 July 1928, adding some five million women to the electorate.

The Representation of the People Act 1918 gave British women the vote from what age, subject to a property qualification?

Men got the vote at 21 under the same act; the gap was chosen because it was all that was politically possible.

In her final years Emmeline Pankhurst was selected as a parliamentary candidate for which party?

Alarmed by Bolshevism, she was chosen for Whitechapel and St Georges in 1927 but died before an election.

After a 1913 family rift, Emmeline Pankhurst gave which daughter £20 and a ticket and insisted she emigrate to Australia?

Adela became a founder of both the Communist Party of Australia and, later, a far-right group; the rift never healed.

In March 1914 suffragette Mary Richardson attacked which Velázquez painting in the National Gallery with an axe?

She said she was maiming the most beautiful woman in mythological history in protest at the government maiming Mrs Pankhurst.

A statue of Emmeline Pankhurst was unveiled in 1930 at which spot beside the Houses of Parliament?

One of her former WSPU bodyguards, Catherine Marshall, raised the money for it.

Emmeline Pankhurst was born in 1858 in which English city?

One of her homes there opened in 1987 as the Pankhurst Centre, a museum and women's space.

Australian suffragist Vida Goldstein copied the WSPU colours for her 1910 Senate campaign but got them slightly wrong, using purple, green and which colour?

She used the correct set for her 1913 campaign and for the flag of her Women's Peace Army.

Which country, then a Grand Duchy within the Russian Empire, was the first in Europe to introduce women's suffrage, in 1906?

Its 1907 election returned 19 women, the first female members of any parliament.

Women in France could not vote until which year, when de Gaulle's government-in-exile granted the right?

By then France had for a decade been the only Western country not even allowing women to vote in municipal elections.

Swiss women first voted in a federal election in which year?

A February referendum of male voters approved it and the first federal vote with women followed on 31 October.

Which was the last Swiss canton to grant women the vote, forced to do so by a Federal Supreme Court ruling in 1990?

Its men had rejected women's suffrage in the open-air assembly as recently as 1990.

Saudi women voted for the first time in which year's municipal elections?

King Abdullah granted the vote and the right to stand after national and international pressure.

Which Australian colony's Constitutional Amendment (Adult Suffrage) Act of 1894 gave women both the vote and the right to stand for parliament?

Propertied women there had already voted in local elections since 1861.

Kate Sheppard, organiser of the 1893 suffrage petition, has appeared since 1991 on which denomination of her country's banknotes?

Her portrait replaced that of Queen Elizabeth II on the front of the note.

Which Italian state in 1849 became the first in Europe with a law providing for women to vote in administrative elections?

It formalised a tradition already informally present in parts of Italy.

Which US state allowed property-owning women to vote from 1776 until 1807?

A 1807 law restricted the vote to white male taxpayers, ending the experiment.

Which British Crown dependency gave women property owners the vote in 1881, decades ahead of the United Kingdom?

It sits in the Irish Sea and its parliament, Tynwald, claims to be the world's oldest in continuous existence.