Women’s Voting Rights - Suffragettes

Kennedy Derouin / 2024-10-23

In Canada, Women’s History Month is commemorated in October, to celebrate the achievements of girls and women throughout Canada’s history. Canada has made tremendous progress for gender equality, specifically in the 1900s. 

Equality for women has been a challenge for centuries and continues to be a problem across the world. According to World Economic Forum, “[t]here isn't a single country on track to make the UN's targets for gender equality,” (Edmond, 2019) and in countries like Eritrea and Vatican City, women still don’t have the right to vote (editors of World Population Review, 2024). A considerable number of differences have been made in recent years, for example places like Saudi Arabia, Vatican City, Afghanistan and United Arab Emirates have gained more female rights, but still have a ways to go.

In Canada, women earned the right to vote in 1920 due to the women's suffrage protests that occurred numerous times. The first protest was in Winnipeg, Manitoba. It began in the 1870s and ended in 1916, and was by two organizations: Icelandic feminists and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). They were also known as suffragettes. Ontario had to wait one more year before they could vote, unlike the western part of Canada, seeing as it was a very different place for women than Ontario.