March is Women’s History Month
February's decisive election victory of Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, Japan’s first woman leader, and her party is historic.
That victory was a fitting prelude to March, which is Women’s History Month, featuring International Women’s Day on March 8.
The past century — a period of extraordinarily costly global conflict and war — has also been a time of unprecedented human progress and positive development. The proliferation of women in business, government and other sectors of society has been a driver as well as a reflection of extraordinary human advancement.
These developments deserve attention at any time, but especially at the present, a strangely uncertain time in history.
Key to this progress has been the power of the vote, which in turn has led to other progress.
You may be surprised to learn that the first self-governing nation to introduce universal suffrage was New Zealand, in 1893. Reform leader Kate Sheppard spearheaded the remarkably successful movement that secured passage of the Electoral Act shortly before national elections on Nov. 28 of that year.
Significantly, the right to vote was expanded comprehensively to include indigenous Maori women. On the downside, women could not run as candidates until 1919.
Similarly, women achieved the right to vote in Britain’s colony of South Australia in 1894, and throughout Australia in 1902, along with the right to run as candidates. Nonwhites, however, were excluded. Notably, Finland initiated universal female and male suffrage in 1906.
Universal adult suffrage became the law in the U.S. in 1920 with the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. Legislation passed in Great Britain in 1918 and 1928 extending the right to vote first to some property-holding women, and then to women regardless of property ownership.
Jeannette Rankin, a Republican from Wyoming, was the first woman elected to Congress in 1916. She served two terms in the House of Representatives, 1917-19 and 1941-43, and courageously voted against entry to both World Wars. After beginning slowly, recent decades have witnessed rapid expansion in the numbers of women elected to both houses of Congress, as well as local and state offices in all parts of the country.
In 2026, 155 women are serving in the 119th Congress, or 28 percent of the total.
Internationally, women have steadily increased their involvement and influence in government and other industries and sectors. The Carter Center in Atlanta has been a catalyst for such reform for over four decades.
It was founded by former President Jimmy Carter after he was defeated for reelection by Ronald Reagan in 1980. He did not retire, but rather immediately went to work building the now universally respected and influential institution.
From the start, a sustained priority of the institution has been promoting female literacy in low-income or newly industrializing nations. Data confirms that basic literacy for girls and women leads directly to other positive changes, including a decline in high birthrates, greater social stability and economic development.
As democracy spreads, the average human lifespan increases dramatically and the planet’s population moves slowly out of poverty, the continued expansion of women in the public, private and nonprofit sectors worldwide remains essential to this extraordinary progress.
Arthur I. Cyr (acyr@carthage.edu) is author of “After the Cold War” (NYU Press and Macmillan/Palgrave).