UK Representation of the People Act enfranchises women

Date

6 February 1918

Category

Social & demographic

Region

Western Europe (United Kingdom)

Era

Modern

Significance

The Representation of the People Act 1918 granted parliamentary voting rights to women in Britain for the first time, alongside near-universal male suffrage.

Women over the age of 30 who met a property qualification (or whose husbands did) could now vote, enfranchising about 8.5 million women, roughly 40 per cent of the adult female population. The Act tripled the British electorate from about 7.7 million to over 21 million. The age and property restrictions were a deliberate compromise: had women voted on the same terms as men, they would have formed an electoral majority because of male wartime deaths. The reform reflected the impact of women's contributions during the First World War and decades of suffragist and suffragette campaigning. Equal franchise on the same terms as men followed in 1928. As one of the earliest enfranchisements in a major industrial power, the Act helped trigger a wider post-war wave of women's suffrage across Europe and beyond.

Empires active in 6 February 1918

• Empire of Japan
  1868 CE to 1947 CE
• French Colonial Empire (Second)
  1830 CE to 1962 CE
• German Empire
  1871 CE to 1918 CE
• British Empire
  1583 CE to 1997 CE
• Spanish Empire
  1492 CE to 1976 CE
• Portuguese Empire
  1415 CE to 1999 CE

Related social & demographic events

• Influenza pandemic of 1918 to 1920
  1918 to 1920
• The Holocaust and the 'Final Solution'
  1941 to 1945
• Bengal Famine of 1943
  1943 to 1944
• Emancipation of the serfs in Russia
  3 March 1861 (19 February O.S.)
• The Great Irish Famine
  1845 to 1852
• May Fourth Movement in China
  4 May 1919

Essential reading

• Haber-Bosch Process Industrialises Synthetic Nitrogen Fertiliser
  September 1913
• 1931 Central China Floods
  June to August 1931
• The Dust Bowl
  1930 to 1940 (peak 1934 to 1936)
• Cárdenas Nationalises Mexico's Oil
  1938

Further reading

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

The wider story

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Yuval Noah Harari

Global best-seller on how our species, its populations and societies remade the world.

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