War, Revolution and the Expansion of Women's Political Citizenship

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This project explores the relationship between conflict and the expansion of women’s political citizenship from 1900 to 2022. It considers two key forms of political citizenship: women’s suffrage and the expansion of women’s representation in national and subnational governing bodies. While there are multiple paths to expanding women’s citizenship, women’s political rights have often increased more rapidly in times of conflict and revolution. The decline of empires after World Wars I and II served as a catalyst for the subsequent creation of new nations along with the expansion of women’s suffrage and their right to run for office. Civil wars, wars of national liberation, and revolutions have had similar outcomes in expanding women’s political citizenship under certain conditions. This study advances theoretical understanding of how conflict opens up opportunities and creates conditions for the expansion of women’s citizenship. The study has potential implications for understanding propitious moments for advancing women’s rights. This study involves a study of archival and secondary in-country sources relating to women’s political citizenship at critical junctures of transition from an old to a new political order. It is hypothesized that the expansion of opportunities and women’s citizenship occurs especially where conflict leads to changes in the political elite. Conflict also opens up opportunity structures (e.g., peace talks, electoral and constitutional reform processes) that allow for women’s rights mobilization. Finally, these changes often occur in the context of a diffusion of changing global norms. Selected cases represent the different types of conflict. The first group includes cases diverse in time and location tied to the end of empire in the context of conflict. For a second group the conflict is the end of civil war. A third group, included for contrast, is cases with an absence of conflict.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.