Editing Women's suffrage (section)

===Before the 19th century===
In ancient [[Athenian democracy|Athens]], often cited as the birthplace of democracy, only adult male citizens who owned land were permitted to vote.{{Citation needed|date=February 2024}}  Through subsequent centuries, Europe was ruled by monarchs, though various forms of parliament arose at different times. The high rank ascribed to [[abbess]]es within the [[Catholic Church]] permitted some women the right to sit and vote at national assemblies – as with various high-ranking abbesses in Medieval Germany, who were ranked among the independent princes of the empire. Their Protestant successors enjoyed the same privilege almost into modern times.<ref name="Abbess">{{cite encyclopedia |url=http://oce.catholic.com/index.php?title=Abbess |title=Abbess |encyclopedia=Original Catholic Encyclopedia |date=July 2, 2010|access-date=December 26, 2012 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120114130058/http://oce.catholic.com/index.php?title=Abbess |archive-date=January 14, 2012 }}</ref>

[[Marie Guyart]], a French nun who worked with the [[First Nations in Canada|First Nations]] people of Canada during the 17th century, wrote in 1654 regarding the suffrage practices of [[Iroquois]] women: "These female chieftains are women of standing amongst the savages, and they have a deciding vote in the councils. They make decisions there like their male counterparts, and it is they who even delegated as first ambassadors to discuss peace."<ref>''Women Mystics Confront the Modern World'' (Marie-Florine Bruneau: State University of New York: 1998: p. 106).</ref> The Iroquois, like many First Nations in North America,{{citation needed|date=January 2021|reason=The only other First Nation example I could find was the Haida people}} had a [[matrilineal]] [[kinship system]]. Property and descent were passed through the female line. Women elders voted on hereditary male chiefs and could depose them.

[[File:Catherine Helen Spence.jpg|thumb|[[South Australia]]n suffragist [[Catherine Helen Spence]] stood for office in 1897. In a first for the modern world, South Australia granted women the right to stand for Parliament in 1895.<ref name=SA1895>{{cite web |url=https://www.parliament.sa.gov.au/education/teachers/Documents/Women's%20Petition%20Photograph.pdf |title=Women's Suffrage Petition 1894 |publisher=parliament.sa.gov.au |access-date=January 8, 2016 |archive-date=March 29, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110329160732/http://www.parliament.sa.gov.au/education/teachers/Documents/Women%27s%20Petition%20Photograph.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref>|330x330px]]
[[File:Marie Stritt.jpg|thumb|[[Marie Stritt]] (1855–1928), German suffragist, co-founder of the [[International Alliance of Women]]|330x330px]]

The first independent country to introduce women's suffrage was arguably Sweden. In Sweden, conditional women's suffrage was in effect during the [[Age of Liberty]] (1718–1772).<ref name="Karlsson Sjögren"/>

In 1756, [[Lydia Taft]] became the first legal woman voter in colonial America. This occurred under [[British North America|British rule]] in the [[Province of Massachusetts Bay|Massachusetts Colony]].<ref name="address">{{cite book |last=Chapin |first=Judge Henry |title=Address Delivered at the Unitarian Church in Uxbridge; 1864 |page=[https://archive.org/details/addressdelivere00socigoog/page/n19 172] |year=1881|publisher=Worcester, Press of C. Hamilton |location=Worcester, Mass.|url=https://archive.org/details/addressdelivere00socigoog}}</ref> In a [[New England]] [[town meeting]] in [[Uxbridge, Massachusetts|Uxbridge]], Massachusetts, she voted on at least three occasions.<ref name="blacks">{{cite web|title=Uxbridge Breaks Tradition and Makes History: Lydia Taft by Carol Masiello|publisher=The Blackstone Daily|url=http://blackstonedaily.com/Journeys/cm-lt.htm|access-date=January 21, 2011|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110812130808/http://blackstonedaily.com/Journeys/cm-lt.htm|archive-date=August 12, 2011}}</ref> Unmarried white women who owned property could vote in [[New Jersey]] from 1776 to 1807.<ref>[https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/local/history/new-jersey-women-vote-1776-suffrage/ "More than a century before the 19th Amendment, women were voting in New Jersey"]. ''Washington Post''.</ref>

In the 1792 elections in [[Sierra Leone]], then a new British colony, all heads of household could vote and one-third were ethnic African women.<ref>[[Simon Schama|Schama, Simon]], ''[[Rough Crossings]]'' (2006), p. 431.</ref>

Other early instances of women's suffrage include the [[Corsican Republic]] (1755), the [[Pitcairn Islands]] (1838), the [[Isle of Man]] (1881), and [[Franceville, New Hebrides|Franceville]] (1889–1890), but some of these operated only briefly as independent states and others were not clearly independent.