3 Rare Handbills and Pamphlets on Suffrage & the Global Impact of Women's Equality

A collection of 3 pieces on women's suffrage promoting the social benefits, implications, and major societal supporters of women's suffrage. Includes: a 1912 handbill "What Woman Suffrage Means in New Zealand," a 1917 pamphlet from Russia entitled "Universal Suffrage," and a rare handbill in French from Canada, "The Catholic Church is Not Opposed to Woman." These 3 rare, printed documents circa 1912-1923 embody the efforts early 20th-century suffragists made to show how society would benefit from, as well as the benign nature of, women's suffrage.

This collection celebrates activists who believed they could set a positive example for women worldwide, and the nations who governed them. Their international message -- in English, Russian, and French -- was that there was no good reason to oppose women the vote. In proudly announcing this fact, these publications helped bring about global change. International collaborations among suffragists began in the late 19th century, with arguments for women's universal equality increasingly published and circulated to promote suffrage from all angles. The earliest nation in this archive to extend women's suffrage was New Zealand in 1893. In support of other nations, women in New Zealand released this 1912 handbill "What Woman Suffrage Means in New Zealand" to outline the social benefits of enfranchisement. Next was Russia, represented by a 1917 pamphlet "Universal Suffrage" from the year women gained the vote. Efforts for suffrage in Canada, the U.S., Germany, and England were all highly collaborative, and by this effort, major institutions sometimes joined the fight. Suffragists on either side of the Atlantic combined resources, and when women won the right to vote 1918-1928, it had already been promoted by at least 1 major world religion: Catholicism. This collection includes a rare handbill in French from Canada, "The Catholic Church is Not Opposed to Woman." Very good condition. Together, this collection of 3 very rare pieces traces women's international collaborations and widespread social efforts toward equality.