Women Had to Wait

Abstract

Abstract The process of enfranchisement for women would prove still more protracted than for men. Historians highlight the fact that the female vote in France was obtained as late as 1944, almost a century after all males were enfranchised, but this surprising delay can be partly explained by the precocious arrival of universal manhood suffrage in 1848, often simply referred to as ‘universal suffrage’ by contemporaries. Almost everywhere, there was an interval between the award of votes to men and women, usually shorter where full male suffrage arrived later. This ‘gender gap’, which has been the subject of much discussion of late, was thus exaggerated in France, but women themselves were more active and inventive in demanding the franchise than is often supposed. They were standing for election and holding local office before their right to vote was finally recognized, despite the frustration of their demands, which stemmed from a gendered ideology of citizenship and the particular resistance of male politicians in parliament. In the period after the Second World War their apprenticeship in voting was rapidly accomplished and, of late, French women have achieved a high degree of parity in elected office.