This volume explores the politics of women’s suffrage from the age of empire to the eve of decolonization. Leading international scholars analyze suffrage movements in Palestine under the British Mandate, in Southern Africa, in New Zealand and Australia, in India and Iran, in Canada and the US, as well as in the United Kingdom.
The book emphasizes both transnational connections between suffrage campaigns around the British Empire, and complex interactions with other social movements in the metropole and colonies. It creates a new framework for asking critical questions about the social and cultural heterogeneity of women and the political and ideological diversity of feminism. Women’s suffrage, it is suggested in this volume, should be read as much more than a narrative of gains or losses. Rather, women’s suffrage has engaged with and reshaped some of the most important questions in modern politics, such as nation-building and democratic citizenship.
Offering new theoretical perspectives as well as a wealth of original research material, Women’s Suffrage in the British Empire will be of essential interest to students of history, politics and gender studies.
