Suffrage, Democracy, and War

Abstract

Abstract The adoption of women’s suffrage in national elections brought expectations of dramatic political and social change throughout the world. But the reality of suffrage was more nuanced. Many who lived through suffrage did not feel they were living through a revolution. Women did not vote in large numbers and their voting patterns did not appear to differ all that much from men’s. But like many notable social, economic, and biological changes, political change can accumulate in slow and gradual ways. Far from having little noticeable effect, recent research has shown that women’s suffrage has in fact brought about significant economic, social, and political change at the domestic level. This chapter describes these changes and presents novel evidence that women’s votes have also had a dramatic, pacifying impact on international affairs.