It is difficult to establish a single date for women's first act of suffrage as the movement for women's right to vote is a long and hard battle. It is known that women's first rights to vote were obtained in the united States in the 1860's. It was in countries like Sweden and Britain where women began to win some of their rights.

By the end of the XIX century, US women had suffrage rights only in three states. Wyoming in 1869 and Colorado in 1893 are said to be the first states where women got their right to vote.

however, as Rebecca Mead claims in her book How the Vote was Won, By the end of 1914 almost every western state had managed to get women their right to vote although in eastern and southern states the situation was more difficult for women.

It is crucial to remember, contrary to popular perception that in Muslim countries women gianed their right to vote as early as 1919 in Azerbaijan, followed by Tayikistan in 1924, Turkmenistan in 1927, Turkey in 1930, Uzbekistan in 1938, Senegal and Indonesia in 1935, Pakistan and Iraq in 1938 and Siria in 1939.

It is a problem when woemn are divided between western (advanced, progressive, liberated) and non-western (passive, oppressed and submissive) as it occludes the fact that women's discrimination is embedded in most patriarchal societies, in which western and non-western societies are included.