Women have been mistreated and used as objects by men since the beginning of time. Although it has gotten a lot better over the years after countless battles for their rights, the inequality between women and men still stands to this day. 

Women around the world

 Most people reading this were born in Canada, a place where women got the right to vote and are, for the most part, equal to men which explain why most of us are unaware of what women have to face every day around the globe. 

For instance in India, violence towards women is considered “normal” and “acceptable” by everyone. The woman does not have the right to say anything about the cruelty she’s experiencing to keep her family’s honour. Not only are they physically abused, but they are also sexually abused. All of this violence sometimes even leads to the murder of their own wives.

In some countries, women just got the right to vote like in Saudi Arabia. They could not vote until 2011 when king Abdullah allowed it for the 2015 elections. 

 In other places around the globe women are allowed to vote but getting out of their house is too dangerous and can be deadly for some, for example in Kenya. In Egypt, women can vote but to do so they would have to remove their veils which most are uncomfortable to do. 

Rundown through history 

The Women’s Social and Political Union, known as the suffragettes, was founded on October 10th, 1903 by Emmeline Pankhurst and her two daughters. It was created to support and fight for women’s voting rights in the United Kingdom. In order to get their rights, they would spit on police officers and would ruin the windows of shops and other common places. After 10 years of manifestation, in April of 1913, the WSPU movement’s meetings were condemned, but they didn’t stop even though it was now forbidden and on November 21st, 1918 women in the UK finally had rights. Here in Quebec, it took a bit longer for women to finally get their voting rights. It only happened in 1940 which is 22 years later than pretty much all the provinces in Canada and still not all women could vote, only the white, black and Asian women could do so. Meaning Indigenous women still could not vote. Indigenous men and women finally fully got the right to vote in 1969 in Quebec.