John Stuart Mill's Enfranchisement Of Women During The French Revolution

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It was only with the advent of modern socio-political structures of democracy in the West, the society as a whole took up women’s cause for gender equality. It was during the French Revolution that the idea that women might share political power gained support. The intellectual uprising in France led by the philosophers, Voltaire, Montesquieu and Rousseau that resulted in the French Revolution of 1789 could not have left women unaffected. The demands for liberty, equality and fraternity in the French Revolution, could not have been sustained without extending the universal ideas to everyone, irrespective of sex. Though women came in the lead to support the French Revolution, enfranchisement did not come for them with the Revolution. Philosophers …show more content…

He drew attention to the consequences of women’s deprivation of the right to vote. He refuted claims that women were inherently inferior. He felt strongly that rational men would only gain from the emancipation of women. He wrote against the laws which kept women subordinate and the political system that excluded women from the franchise. The election of John Stuart Mill to Parliament in 1865 marked the beginning of the real battle for women’s enfranchisement. Mill argued that when voting rights had not reduced the efficiency of men how they could affect women adversely in any way (Patrick Hollis 1979: 154). Mill also dismissed the contention that most women did not wish for the suffrage, he further stressed that to expect most women to take interest in great public questions without giving them the right to vote was not …show more content…

Finland gave widows and unmarried women local voting rights in 1865 itself. However, all women in that country received universal suffrage in 1906. Women tax payers in Norway received the right to vote in municipal elections in 1901. In 1907, women who had the right to vote in local elections could exercise their franchise in national elections. In 1910 all women were able to vote in municipal elections which in 1913 were extended to national elections. Danish women started voting in municipal elections from 1907 and for parliament from 1915. Until 1910, only three countries extended to women the right to vote in national legislatures. Between 1910 and 1920 women in twelve more countries secured voting

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