The first portion of the video which I posted a couple days ago (and I will shortly create a page of its own for it) is a song which was created for the suffrage movement.
What is that? you ask.
Many cite it as the beginning of Feminism. Women banded together in order to receive their right to vote. Depending upon the country you are from, how and when this happened differs greatly.
As I live in Canada I’m going to focus on our long journey to suffrage here.
…Gentlemen, we object to being classed with those who are denied the vote. We are not idiots, not imbeciles. We are women, and we are asking for equal franchise, not as a favour, but because it is just that we should have it.
–Zoe Haight (Herstory 1987), in a speech to the Saskatchewan legislature while presenting the 1916 suffrage petition.
In Canada the suffrage movement began in the late 1800′s. It became more pressing in the mid 1910′s. In 1914 following a remark from the Premier of Manitoba the Manitoba’s Political equity league staged a satire called “The Women’s Parliament”. The women of the “Parliament” discussed the idea of the enfranchisement of (basically giving the vote to) men. This satire did much to encourage giving women the vote in Manitoba. (Click here to see a video of the satire described by a woman who saw it as a young girl) On 28 January 1916 women in Manitoba won the right to vote by Saskatchewan on March 14 and Alberta on April 19. IN BC women got the vote on April 5 1917 and in Ontario on April 12 of the same year.
Then in 1917 the Wartime Elections Act was passed allowing some women the ability to vote. In 1918 women over 21 received the right to vote federally, even if they were not allowed to do so provincially. Even with this right women were still not considered to be “persons” under the law. This would continue to be so until the Persons Case in 1929 when it was brought before the British Privy Council after the Supreme Court of Canada declared that women were not persons.
Between 1918 and 1934 women in almost all provinces received the right to vote. Quebec women were the last to receive this right as it was not until 1940 that they were allowed to vote provincially.
