ABSTRACT
For nearly 300 years, women across the globe have understood that feminism and democracy are inextricably linked and have insistently demanded that states recognize women’s right to vote, legislate, and govern. In advocating democratic rights, feminists knew that political power alone would not overturn all forms of gender oppression, but they also knew that until women could effectively represent their own interests, they would remain in thrall to the good graces of men. Focusing on feminist demands for suffrage and representation at three watershed moments in global history - the Atlantic Revolutions of the late eighteenth century, the apogee of liberal internationalism in the wake of World War I, and the grassroots movements for political reform of the early twenty-first century - this essay argues the fight for women’s political rights has been constitutive of the fight for democracy itself.
