Dear reader,
In 1910, George Bernard Shaw created a curious character called General Mitchener in his play Press Cuttings. This high-ranking officer could face down armies but trembled at the sight of suffragettes (women fighting for the right to vote) with pamphlets. Shaw sets the play a couple of years into the future and on an April Fool’s Day:
The forenoon of the first of April, 1911.
General Mitchener is at his writing table in the War Office, opening letters. On his left is the fireplace, with a fire burning. On his right, against the opposite wall is a standing desk with an office stool. The door is in the wall behind him, half way between the table and the desk. The table is not quite in the middle of the room: it is nearer to the hearthrug than to the desk. There is a chair at each end of it for persons having business with the general. There is a telephone on the table. Long silence.
A VOICE OUTSIDE. Votes for Women!
The General starts convulsively; snatches a revolver from a drawer, and listens in an agony of apprehension. Nothing happens. He puts the revolver back, ashamed; wipes his brow; and resumes his work.
While real British generals of the 1910s were mapping war strategies, Mitchener was barricading himself against an “invasion” of women armed with nothing more dangerous than logical arguments and determination. He treated peaceful protesters as if they were an opposing army, proving that perhaps it wasn’t women who were too hysterical for politics after all.
Shaw, who was a staunch supporter of the suffragette movement, proved prophetic. Across the world, the “invasion” of women into political life did indeed arrive, not with the cavalry charges that generals understood, but with the inexorable force of justice that they feared even more.
But what’s curious about Press Cuttings and its many quirky, sarcastic takes on those who opposed the very idea of giving women the right to vote, make laws, and become equal partners in the electoral process is that it continues to be relevant even today. And the General Mitcheners are still unhappy.
Women in Britain got voting rights in 1928 (though partial suffrage was granted to some women over 30 in 1918). Globally, 91 per cent of women have voting rights now. This also means 9 per cent of them don’t. Those who don’t have voting rights are mainly from regions in West Asia (particularly Saudi Arabia before 2015), parts of Southeast Asia, and some areas in North Africa where women’s political participation remains restricted.
The fears that Shaw satirised through the character of General Mitchener—of women disrupting the established political order—would manifest across continents and cultures throughout the 20th century and beyond. While the British women’s suffrage movement made headlines with its militant tactics that so unnerved Shaw’s fictional general, parallel movements were unfolding across the globe, each facing its own version of resistance—from mild ridicule to outright violent suppression.
The path to women’s suffrage represents more than just the right to cast a ballot—it is the fundamental recognition of women as full citizens and political actors. Yet even today, despite constituting roughly half the world’s population, women’s electoral participation and representation continue to face both overt barriers and subtle impediments across societies. The challenge lies not only in securing legal voting rights but in transforming deeply entrenched social and political structures that have historically marginalised women’s voices.
The global journey toward women’s suffrage reveals striking parallels across the world. It began in the mid-19th century, with New Zealand becoming the first self-governing country to grant women the right to vote in 1893. This watershed moment inspired movements across the globe. In the US, the 72-year battle culminating in the 19th Amendment’s ratification in 1920 was marked by unprecedented activism, with suffragists like Alice Paul and Carrie Chapman Catt employing strategies ranging from peaceful protests to hunger strikes. Their methods would later influence civil rights movements worldwide. In India, women’s suffrage was influenced by both the independence movement and social reform initiatives. Women like Sarojini Naidu, the “Nightingale of India”, played a pivotal role in advocating for universal suffrage, which was ultimately guaranteed in the Constitution of 1950.
These hard-won victories would prove to be just the beginning of a much longer journey. While women’s suffrage movements succeeded in their primary goal, the subsequent decades revealed a stark gap between the right to vote and the right to be voted into power. The transition from being participants in democracy to becoming its architects and leaders would prove to be an even more challenging battle, one that continues to this day.
The data tells a compelling story of progress: according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, women’s representation in national parliaments has more than doubled globally since 1995, reaching an average of 26.9 per cent by 2023. But this figure masks crucial regional disparities. Rwanda leads with 61.3 per cent women in its lower house, while dozens of countries still struggle to reach even 20 per cent representation. (As of the 2024 Lok Sabha election, India’s representation of women in the Lok Sabha, the Lower House of Parliament, stands at just about 14 per cent, with 74 women elected out of a total of 543 members.) A UN report says that at the current rate, gender parity in national legislative bodies won’t be achieved until—hold your breath—2063.
Over the years, the concept of the “women’s vote” has evolved dramatically. Initially seen as a monolithic bloc, contemporary analysis reveals its nuanced nature. Gender interacts with factors like race, class, caste (especially in India), education, and geographic location to shape political preferences and participation patterns. The recent US presidential election highlighted this, with post-election analysis showing variations in women’s voting patterns across demographic groups.
The numbers tell a stark story. Despite comprising roughly half the global population, women face systematic exclusion from political power structures. In The Authority Gap, the British journalist Mary Ann Sieghart presents compelling evidence of how women’s voices are literally heard less in political meetings—they are interrupted more, given less time to speak, and their suggestions are often attributed to male colleagues who repeat them later. Surprising? Well, not exactly.
Such a power deficit has real consequences. A 2023 UN Women report shows that countries with higher women’s representation consistently pass more comprehensive legislation on issues like domestic violence, healthcare access, and workplace discrimination. Iceland, consistently ranking first in global gender equality indices, illustrates this correlation. Its parliament passed groundbreaking equal pay legislation in 2018, making it illegal to pay men more than women for the same job.
That said, an interesting shift is occurring, driven mainly by market forces rather than political enlightenment. The Boston Consulting Group estimates that women controlled about 40 per cent of global wealth in 2023, projected to grow at 6 per cent annually. This economic power is changing political arithmetic. The rise of what economists call the “she-economy” has forced political establishments to recalibrate their approach. From Brazil to Indonesia and India, political campaigns increasingly target women voters with specific policy promises. Social media adds more momentum to these shifts.
Yet, economic empowerment alone cannot break deeply entrenched patriarchal structures. That needs more comprehensive efforts. Some success stories offer potential roadmaps. New Zealand’s journey from the first country to grant women’s suffrage to achieving gender parity in political representation involved systematic institutional reforms, including campaign finance reforms and leadership development programs. Rwanda’s remarkable achievement came through constitutional quotas combined with grassroots capacity building.
The landscape of women’s political participation stands at a critical juncture today. While market forces and digital activism create unprecedented opportunities, translating these into meaningful political power requires more than economic leverage or social media campaigns. As Caroline Criado Perez argues in Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men (2019), the problem with gender inequality is that it operates in ways so vast and so tiny that both scales seem to make it invisible.
Perhaps this is where we return to Shaw’s Press Cuttings. General Mitchener, terrified of women with pamphlets, represents not just historical resistance to women’s suffrage but the ongoing fear of genuine power-sharing. Today’s “pamphlets” might be tweets, economic statistics, or viral videos, but the fundamental challenge remains: transforming formal voting rights into real political power. The question isn’t whether this transformation will happen, but how long societies will resist the inevitable evolution of their democratic systems.
And we ask these questions in India, where we notice that the recent elections, both Lok Sabha and Assembly, have put a historic spotlight on “women”. It seems the Narendra Modi government now has what FMCG companies call a “life-cycle” approach towards women’s welfare, which means the government has a policy for every stage in a woman’s life.
But is this a good approach? Is there more to women’s welfare than the labharthi (beneficiary) angle? Do women form an important power bloc in politics now? Can they be bought with benefits? Do data support these assumptions? We asked some excellent writers to look at the issue and the result is our latest cover—”Has the Woman Voter Arrived?”—which features essays by Ashish Ranjan, Rajeshwari Deshpande, and Neera Chandhoke, supported by ground reports from our staff writers.
As always, read the pieces and write back with your comments. You can start with Rajeshwari Deshpande’s article below.
Wishing you a great week ahead,
For Frontline,
Jinoy Jose P.
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