Women's Voices (Global Perspectives on the Right to Vote)

This book celebrates a century of progress for women’s voting rights and offers thought-leadership on challenges and opportunities for fully realizing gender equality and women’s empowerment, particularly their full and meaningful inclusion in political life and leadership.

Women's Voices: Global Perspectives on the Right to Vote is a special global collection of essays, published as a companion to personal stories about the importance of the right to vote by women in several countries captured on video and produced with the assistance of LexisNexis and the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES).

These essays will be of particular interest for advocates of women’s voting rights and political inclusion. They provide insightful and pragmatic best practices and suggested actions for women’s rights advocates, policy leaders, legislators, political party leaders, and lawyers to remove bias, prejudice, and discriminatory practices in political parties, elections, and public life.

Authors of these essays represent voices from every continent, except Antarctica. The authors were chosen for their diverse perspectives and for a comparison of experiences within varied legal traditions and systems, including common law, civil law, Islamic law, and customary law. These trailblazing women agreed to share stories of triumph and challenge, whether of their own experiences or those of their mothers and grandmothers, and their thoughts on the way forward. As a reflection of their voices, the essays retain each author’s use of the terms “female” and “women.”