The ability to vote gives a voice, in matters of government, to all Canadians. All. People.
However, there was a time, not that long ago, when women were denied this right.
How and when did Canadian women get the vote?
Long before colonization, Aboriginal women had a voice in the decision-making process of their communities. The Iroquois [Haudenosaunee] and the Mohawk [Kanien’keha:ka], for example, were a matrilineal society where property rights, inheritance, voting rights, and even the arrangements of marriages were held and passed on through the elder women of the community. [1]
The history of [how women earned the right to vote]...in Canada is long and complicated...
The Constitutional Act of 1791 creating Upper [Ontario] and Lower [Quebec] Canada, does not mention gender. Voters are “persons” who own property of a certain value. [2] This effectively meant that voting was inaccessible for a majority of the population, since property in this time period was very expensive. [3] There are no written records of women in Upper Canada (which followed British common law) voting. There are numerous records and accounts of female property owners voting in Lower Canada (which followed the civil code practiced from French colonial days)… [However, in 1834,] Lower Canada restrict[ed] voting by women, to protect them from “dangerous conditions” at polling stations, after deaths occurred during some controversial elections…
The British North America Act, the constitution of the Dominion of Canada, states in Section 41: “every male British subject, aged Twenty-one Years or upwards, being a householder, shall have a vote.” Other criteria for voting [were] based on provincial laws, and all five [provinces] exclude[d] women from the vote. [2] All women in Canada [lost the right to vote after] Confederation in 1870. [4]
[When Queen Victoria ascended the throne and began to rule the British Empire on June 20, 1837, she ushered in the Victorian era. The era ended with her death on January 22, 1901.]
The necessity of being male to vote reflected the emerging Victorian idea of placing women and men in separate spheres. Women were idealized as guarantors of cultural survival, who had no place in political life. They were expected to remain at home, producing children and protecting culture…
Exclusion from the franchise also remained acceptable to many Canadians because many women as well as men believed that men had greater capacity for reason and that men’s potential for military service justified more rights. [5]
