The Politics of Women's Suffrage

Women’s suffrage was the most significant challenge to the constitution since 1832, seeking not only to settle demands for inclusion and justice but to expand and redefine definitions of citizenship. From 1832 to the present day, from the countryside in Wales to the Comintern in Moscow, from America to Finland and Ireland to Australia, from the girls’ school to the stage, we examine how women sought to work within, and remake, political systems and structures. Bringing together early career and established scholars, this collection represents some of the most exciting work emerging from the 2018 centenary of women’s suffrage in Britain, building on the significant feminist scholarship on suffrage and reshaping the conversation for a new generation.

Manuel L. Quezon and the Filipino women’s suffrage movement of 1937

Manuel L. Quezon is often credited by historians like Encarnacion Alzona (1937) as a staunch advocate of women’s right to vote. Indeed, the history of the struggle for women’s suffrage often highlights the role that Quezon played in terms of supporting the 1937 plebiscite as the president of the Philippine Commonwealth. Various print media of the period like dailies and magazines depicted him, and consequently, the success of the women’s suffrage movement, in the same light (e.g., Philippine Graphic, Manila Bulletin). However, closer scrutiny of Quezon’s speeches, letters, and biography in relation to other pertinent primary sources would reveal that Quezon was, at best, ambivalent, on the cause of the suffragists. His appreciation of the women’s suffrage’s merits was tied and anchored on certain political gains that he could acquire from it. In contrast to the appreciation of his contemporaries like Rafael Palma, Quezon’s appreciation of the women’s right to vote was based on patronage politics and not on the view that the right to suffrage is a right of women and not a privilege. His support for the cause was aimed at putting himself at the forefront of this landmark legislation and thus the real champions of the cause—the women—at the sidelines

Women’s Suffrage and Children’s Education

While a growing literature shows that women, relative to men, prefer greater investment in children, it is unclear whether empowering women produces better economic outcomes. Exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in US suffrage laws, we show that exposure to suffrage during childhood led to large increases in educational attainment for children from disadvantaged backgrounds, especially Blacks and Southern Whites. We also find that suffrage led to higher earnings alongside education gains, although not for Southern Blacks. Using newly digitized data, we show that education increases are primarily explained by suffrage-induced growth in education spending, although early-life health improvements may have also contributed. (JEL H75, I21, I22, J13, J15, J16, N32)

Unter Gleichen

This year's XXII edition of the APARIUZ series, entitled "Unter Gleichen" ("Among Equals"), programmatically takes up the fiftieth anniversary, scheduled for 2021, of one of the most significant legal-historical and political events in Switzerland: the introduction of universal women's suffrage and voting rights. Based on this milestone, which is hard to surpass in its social and legal implications, the thirteen contributions in this anthology, written by young female scholars from all legal disciplines, examine a wide variety of questions about the complex and multifaceted relationship between law, equality, and justice.