Editing Women's suffrage (section)

==== India ====
{{main|Women's suffrage in India}}
Women in India were allowed to vote right from the first general elections after the independence of India in 1947 unlike during the British rule who resisted allowing women to vote.<ref name="BBCWomen">{{Cite news|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-43081429|title=Did the Empire resist women's suffrage in India?|last=Biswas|first=Soutik|date=February 2, 2018|access-date=August 15, 2019}}</ref> The [[Women's Indian Association]] (WIA) was founded in 1917. It sought votes for women and the right to hold legislative office on the same basis as men. These positions were endorsed by the main political groupings, the [[Indian National Congress]].<ref name = Basu>{{cite journal|doi=10.1177/037698360803500106|title=Women's Struggle for the Vote: 1917-1937|year=2008|last1=Basu|first1=Aparna|journal=Indian Historical Review|volume=35|pages=128–143|s2cid=148755031}}</ref> British and [[Feminism in India|Indian feminists]] combined in 1918 to publish a magazine ''Stri Dharma'' that featured international news from a feminist perspective.<ref>{{cite journal|doi=10.1080/09612020300200377|title=Writingstri dharma: International feminism, nationalist politics, and women's press advocacy in late colonial India|year=2003|last1=Elizabeth Tusan|first1=Michelle|journal=Women's History Review|volume=12|issue=4|pages=623–649|s2cid=219611926|doi-access=free}}</ref> In 1919 in the [[Montagu–Chelmsford Reforms]], the British set up provincial legislatures which had the power to grant women's suffrage. Madras in 1921 granted votes to wealthy and educated women, under the same terms that applied to men. The other provinces followed, but not the princely states (which did not have votes for men either, being monarchies).<ref name = Basu/> In [[Bengal]] province, the provincial assembly rejected it in 1921 but Southard shows an intense campaign produced victory in 1921. Success in Bengal depended on middle class Indian women, who emerged from a fast-growing urban elite. The women leaders in Bengal linked their crusade to a moderate nationalist agenda, by showing how they could participate more fully in nation-building by having voting power. They carefully avoided attacking traditional gender roles by arguing that traditions could coexist with political modernization.<ref>{{cite journal|doi=10.1017/S0026749X00011549|title=Colonial Politics and Women's Rights: Woman Suffrage Campaigns in Bengal, British India in the 1920s|year=1993|last1=Southard|first1=Barbara|journal=Modern Asian Studies|volume=27|issue=2|pages=397–439|s2cid=145276788|doi-access=free}}</ref>

Whereas wealthy and educated women in Madras were granted voting right in 1921, in Punjab the [[Sikh]]s granted women equal voting rights in 1925, irrespective of their educational qualifications or being wealthy or poor. This happened when the Gurdwara Act of 1925 was approved. The original draft of the Gurdwara Act sent by the British to the [[Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee|Sharomani Gurdwara Prabhandak Committee]] (SGPC) did not include Sikh women, but the Sikhs inserted the clause without the women having to ask for it. Equality of women with men is enshrined in the [[Guru Granth Sahib]], the [[sacred scripture]] of the Sikh faith.

In the [[Government of India Act 1935]] the [[British Raj]] set up a system of separate electorates and separate seats for women. Most women's leaders opposed segregated electorates and demanded adult franchise. In 1931 the Congress promised universal adult franchise when it came to power. It enacted equal voting rights for both men and women in 1947.<ref name = Basu/>