HISTORY
OF
CIM
Hemispheric
Struggle for Women's Suffrage
Extending
the vote to women was the first goal of CIM. When the Commission was first
formed in 1928, the United States and Canada were the only countries in
the Americas where women had the right to vote.
The
reasons for which women were finally granted suffrage differed greatly
from country to country, which "underscores the political diversity
of the hemisphere." Supporters almost always advocated women's
suffrage arguing that women would produce a "more moral
society." Women themselves throughout the region understood that
access to the vote was a first step toward political enfranchisement and
empowerment.
Early
feminists in Latin America recognized that there were advantages in
addressing the question of women's rights in an international forum and
that the leverage provided through this inter-American body was crucial to
the expansion of political and civil rights in their own societies. CIM
was instrumental in pushing for the debate of the issue of female suffrage
at the national and international levels, and gradually—over the next
thirty years—women throughout the Americas won the right to vote and to
stand for office.
The
struggle to extend effective suffrage to the women in the Americas, which
so animated the presence of women at the international conferences of
1923, 1928, and 1933, came to a successful conclusion when in 1961,
Paraguay granted women the right to vote and in 1965, Guatemala, which had
granted suffrage to a restricted group of women in 1945, extended the
right to vote to all women. The circumstances in which women in most of
the English-speaking nations of the Caribbean, as well as Belize, Guyana,
Suriname, and Canada, acquired the right to vote were different. Universal
suffrage and participation and women's active role in political life
predated independence in the English-speaking Commonwealth.
Women's
Suffrage in the OAS Member States
| Country |
Year |
Country |
Year |
|
Canada*
|
1918
|
Barbados
|
1950
|
|
United
States
|
1920
|
Antigua
and Barbuda
|
1951
|
|
Ecuador
|
1929
|
Dominica
|
1951
|
|
Brazil
|
1932
|
Grenada
|
1951
|
|
Uruguay
|
1932
|
Saint
Lucia
|
1951
|
|
Cuba
|
1934
|
St.
Vincent and the Grenadines
|
1951
|
|
El
Salvador (limited)
|
1939
|
Bolivia
|
1952
|
|
Dominican
Republic
|
1942
|
St.
Kitts and Nevis
|
1952
|
|
Jamaica
|
1944
|
Mexico
|
1953
|
|
Guatemala
(limited)
|
1945
|
Guyana
|
1953
|
|
Panama
|
1945
|
Honduras
|
1955
|
|
Trinidad
and Tobago
|
1946
|
Nicaragua
|
1955
|
|
Argentina
|
1947
|
Peru
|
1955
|
|
Venezuela
|
1947
|
Colombia
|
1957
|
|
Suriname
|
1948
|
Paraguay
|
1961
|
|
Chile
|
1949
|
Bahamas
|
1962
|
|
Costa
Rica
|
1949
|
Belize
|
1964
|
|
Haiti
|
1950
|
|
|
* Except Quebec Province where women were granted the right to vote in
1952
