5Lsuffrage2

=__//WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE//__= Australian women's suffrage society was formed in 1889.The aims of the society were to obtain the same rights for woman as were possessed by male voters. In 1891 a woman's suffrage petition with 30,000 signatures was presented to the victorian parliment by various Christian and suffrage societies.

Discussing female suffragist efforts between the First and Second World Wars, DuBois told a women’s studies seminar at Penn in April that historians often view the fight for women’s voting rights — a fight that has been won country-by-country — through the lens of British and American politics. But that lens blinds them to a rich feminist heritage in countries such as France, India, Japan, Sri Lanka, Iran and even Afghanistan, she said. New Zealand woman had become the first in the worldto gain the right to vote in the national election. Woman argued for enfranchisment on the basis of individual rights.

In India, where women and men were both enfranchised when the country obtained its independence from Britain in 1947, for example, the battle for women’s suffrage took place behind the scenes more than a decade earlier. “The crucial victory is in 1931, when the Indian National Congress — which is the leading force for nationalism — votes in favor of women’s suffrage, even though that doesn’t get enacted for the next 16 years,” DuBois said. “That’s the victory.”