Right of women to share on equal terms with men the political privileges affordable by representative government and, more particularly, to vote in election contests and referendums and to hold public office. Equal political rights for women have been advocated since antiquity. Under the autocratic forms of government that prevailed in ancient times and under the feudal regimes of Middle` Aged, however, suffrage was so restricted, even among men, that enfranchised groups if the male population as a consequence of the democratic revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries.
In Colonial America.
The modern woman-suffrage movement originated in postrevolutionary America. Even before the Revolution, American women participated in public life somewhat more freely than European women. In 1647 a wealthy Maryland landholder named Margaret Brent (1600-c. 1671) attempted, boldy but unsuccessfully, to secure “place and voice” in the legislature of the colony.
In Massachusetts women property holders voted from 1691 to 1780. The Continental congress debated the women-suffgrate question at length, deciding finally that the individual states should formulate voting rule. In addition many groups, such as American Quaker, and numerous individual, notably the American patriot Thomas Paine, consistently advocated the enfranchising of women.
Nonetheless, in colonial and early-19th century American, as elsewhere in the world, women commonly were regarded as inferior beings. Their children, property, and earnings belonged by law solely to their husbands, and various legal and social barries made divorce almost unthinkable. In most respects American women were legally on a par with criminals, the insane, and slavers.
