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Women and the Vote: A World History
Before 1893 no woman anywhere in the world had the vote in a national election. A hundred years later almost all countries had enfranchised women, and it was a sign of backwardness not to have done so.
This is the story of how this momentous change came about. The first genuinely global history of women and the vote, it takes the story of women in politics from the earliest times to the present day, revealing startling new connections across time and national boundaries - from Europe and North America to Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Muslim world post-9/11.
A story of individuals as well as of wider movements, it includes the often dramatic life-stories of women's suffrage pioneers from across the world, painting vivid biographical portraits of everyone from Susan B. Anthony and the Pankhursts to hitherto lesser-known activists in China, Latin America, and Africa.
It is also the first major post-feminist history of women's struggle for the vote. Controversially, Jad Adams rejects the widely accepted idea that success was primarily a result of the pressure group politics of the suffragists and their supporters. Ultimately, he argues, it was nationalism, not feminism, that was the most important factor in winning women the vote.
This is the story of how this momentous change came about. The first genuinely global history of women and the vote, it takes the story of women in politics from the earliest times to the present day, revealing startling new connections across time and national boundaries - from Europe and North America to Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Muslim world post-9/11.
A story of individuals as well as of wider movements, it includes the often dramatic life-stories of women's suffrage pioneers from across the world, painting vivid biographical portraits of everyone from Susan B. Anthony and the Pankhursts to hitherto lesser-known activists in China, Latin America, and Africa.
It is also the first major post-feminist history of women's struggle for the vote. Controversially, Jad Adams rejects the widely accepted idea that success was primarily a result of the pressure group politics of the suffragists and their supporters. Ultimately, he argues, it was nationalism, not feminism, that was the most important factor in winning women the vote.
530 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2014
About the author
Jad Adams
25 books19 followersJad Adams is a historian working as an author and an independent television producer. He has specialized in work on radical characters from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and 'the decadence' of the 1890s.
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Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
March 22, 2021
Women and the Vote is “post-feminist” in that while it is largely synthetic, drawing on two decades of feminist scholarship, the political commitments and fierce doctrinal quarrels that animated those works have been left behind.
Jad Adams's world history of women's enfranchisement takes his reader from early political and feminist stirrings in mid-19th-century Europe and America and up to the present day.
The author's conclusions prove thought-provoking: first, that all that activism wasn’t the main force behind enfranchisement, and, second, that women’s votes didn’t make much difference to politics anyway.
A broad remit and peppered with tantalising glimpses of the personalities involved, moments of immense courage, tales of teamwork and of female friendships spanning continents, the difficulties for solo pioneers. There are references galore to feminist, suffragette, conservative, or radical magazines such as Tokyo's Bluestocking or Afghanistan's Payam-e-Zan (Women's Message). The book is impressive in its reach, authoritative in its meticulous research.
Jad Adams's world history of women's enfranchisement takes his reader from early political and feminist stirrings in mid-19th-century Europe and America and up to the present day.
The author's conclusions prove thought-provoking: first, that all that activism wasn’t the main force behind enfranchisement, and, second, that women’s votes didn’t make much difference to politics anyway.
A broad remit and peppered with tantalising glimpses of the personalities involved, moments of immense courage, tales of teamwork and of female friendships spanning continents, the difficulties for solo pioneers. There are references galore to feminist, suffragette, conservative, or radical magazines such as Tokyo's Bluestocking or Afghanistan's Payam-e-Zan (Women's Message). The book is impressive in its reach, authoritative in its meticulous research.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review