Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/787

 

When Volume IV of the History of Woman Suffrage was written in 1900 four pages contained all the information that could be obtained in regard to woman suffrage outside of the United States and Great Britain and her colonies. At the tine the first International Council of Women was held in Washington, in 1888, under the auspices of the National Woman Suffrage Association of the United States, Great Britain was the only other country that had an organization for this purpose. At the writing of the present volume in 1920 there are comparatively few countries in the world having a constitutional form of government where women are not enfranchised. The only two of influence in Europe are France and Italy; the others are Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Greece and Turkey. Women do not vote in Oriental countries. This is also true of Mexico, Central and South America.

The first country in Europe to give equal suffrage to women was Finland in 1906, when it was a Grand Duchy of Russia with its own Diet or Parliament, whose bills required the sanction of the Czar to become laws. Girls were admitted to the full privileges of the university in 1878 and in the student organization they were on a footing of perfect equality. Important positions and even places in the civic administration were open As early as 1863 the Diet gave the local or Municipal vote to taxpaying women in the country and in 1872 to those in the towns, but not eligibility to office. In 1897 the Finnish Women's Association presented a petition to the Diet for full