Paper Topic:

womens sufferage

Women 's suffrage movement

2007

Women saw major gains in political if not social and economic equality in many countries at the end of World War II . Carrie Chapman Catt helped pave the way , although she had turned eighty in 1939 and did not attend the Conference on the Cause and Cure of War that year . She was back in 1942 , though , and saw the committee dissolved in the spring of 1943 . In the middle of World War II , it was succeeded by the Women 's Action Committee for Victory and Lasting

Peace (Van Voris , 1987 . When the war ended in 1945 , Catt called for another women 's crusade . Once again , she rallied women around the world to work for equality and peace . On January 10 , 1944 (her eighty-fifth birthday , Carrie Chapman Catt told an audience of 650 persons that Hitler had taken the vote away from women in twelve European countries . This wartime reminder marked the beginning of another phase in the struggle . She implored all loyal suffragists to help these women regain the ballot , and she joined with her longtime admirer , American First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt , in a plea for world peace (New York Times , 1944a . The elderly Catt continued to maintain some influence as the matriarch of the International Alliance of Women as well as through individual contacts and other international women 's organizations . Public recognition of previous efforts did not help contemporary women , and new rights were slow to be won

Carrie Chapman Catt had learned from World War I that women 's rights depended fundamentally on peace . In August 1945 , on the twenty-fifth anniversary of woman suffrage in the United States , she pointed out that of the thirty-four countries that had given women the vote before the war , fifteen had robbed them of it since . Catt also promoted the International Alliance of Women as they prepared for their first postwar meeting in Geneva , Switzerland , the following year (New York Times 1945a

As Catt again tried to rally women in American and world organizations similar stirrings were underway in other nations as well . In Central America in 1944 , the Nicaraguan Liberal party called for woman suffrage which was not awarded for another decade . In the Middle East , a bill for woman suffrage was introduced in the Chamber of Deputies in Lebanon This prompted Iraqi and Egyptian feminists to call for the ballot again in their countries . Egyptian women had been demanding the right to vote since 1919 (New York Times , 1944b . In December 1944 , Middle Eastern women called a landmark meeting to discuss ways to secure equal rights Delegates came to Cairo from Palestine , Lebanon , Syria , Trans-Jordan and Iraq . While Egypt 's foreign minister , Mahmoud Fahmy Nokrashi Pasha said this meeting was an effective step toward an Arab federation , it meant more to women in that region . At the opening session , Lali Abou Hoda , headof the Trans-Jordanian delegation , tellingly remarked that this was the first meeting the women of her country were ever permitted to attend...

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