Carrie Chapman Catt was an American women's suffrage leader who campaigned for the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which gave U.S. women the right to vote in 1920. Catt served as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association from 1900 to 1904 and 1915 to 1920. She founded the League of Women Voters in 1920 and the International Woman Suffrage Alliance in 1904, which was later named International Alliance of Women. She "led an army of voteless women in 1919 to pressure Congress to pass the constitutional amendment giving them the right to vote and convinced state legislatures to ratify it in 1920" and "was one of the best-known women in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century and was on all lists of famous American women."
Rosika Schwimmer was a Hungarian-born pacifist, feminist, world federalist, and women's suffragist. A co-founder of the Campaign for World Government with Lola Maverick Lloyd, her radical vision of world peace led to the creation of several world federalist movements and organizations. Sixty years after she first envisaged it, the movement she helped to create indeed took a leading role in the creation of the International Criminal Court, the first permanent international tribunal tasked with charging individuals with war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
The Egyptian Feminist Union was the first nationwide feminist movement in Egypt.
The International Congress of Women was created so that groups of existing women's suffrage movements could come together with other women's groups around the world. It served as a way for women organizations across the nation to establish formal means of communication and to provide more opportunities for women to ask the big questions relating to feminism at the time. The congress has been utilized by a number of feminist and pacifist events since 1878. A few groups that participated in the early conferences were The International Council of Women (ICW), The International Alliance of Women (IAW) and The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF).
Jessie Chrystal Macmillan was a suffragist, peace activist, barrister, feminist and the first female science graduate from the University of Edinburgh as well as that institution's first female honours graduate in mathematics. She was an activist for women's right to vote, and for other women's causes. She was the second woman to plead a case before the House of Lords, and was one of the founders of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.
Signe Wilhelmina Ulrika Bergman was a Swedish feminist. She was the chairperson of the National Association for Women's Suffrage (LKPR) which was then called The Swedish Society for Woman Suffrage in English from 1914 to 1917 and the Swedish delegate to International Woman Suffrage Alliance from 1909 to 1920. She was the organiser of the congress of the Sixth Conference of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance in 1911 and the editor of the paper of the LKPR, Rösträtt för kvinnor.
Huda Sha'arawi or Hoda Sha'rawi was a pioneering Egyptian feminist leader, suffragette, nationalist, and founder of the Egyptian Feminist Union.
Annie Fredrika Furuhjelm was a Finnish journalist, feminist activist, and writer. She was a member of the Parliament of Finland from 1913 to 1924 and again from 1927 to 1929, representing the Swedish People's Party of Finland (SFP). She was the first enfranchised woman in Europe to serve as a delegate to the International Women Suffrage Alliance and the first elected female legislator to speak before the British Parliament.
Eugénie Le Brun also known as Madame Rushdi was a French-born early Egyptian feminist intellectual, influential salon host, and close friend of Huda Sha'arawi.
Clara Dorothy Bewick Colby was a British-American lecturer, newspaper publisher and correspondent, women's rights activist, and suffragist leader. Born in England, she immigrated to the US, where she attended university and married the former American Civil War general, later Assistant United States Attorney General, Leonard Wright Colby. In 1883, she founded The Woman's Tribune in Beatrice, Nebraska, moving it three years later to Washington, D.C.; it became the country's leading women's suffrage publication. She was an advocate of peace and took part in the great peace conference at San Francisco during the exposition. She also spoke on behalf of the soldiers of the Spanish War. During the Spanish–American War (1898), she was officially appointed as war correspondent, the first woman to be so recognized.
Saiza Nabarawi,(Arabic: سيزا النبراوي) also spelt as Siza Nabrawi or Ceza Nabarawi,, (1897–1985) was an Egyptian journalist educated in Paris, and who eventually became the leading journalist for the L'Egyptienne magazine.
First Conference of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance was held in 1902 in Washington D.C. to consider the feasibility of organizing an International Woman Suffrage Association.
Second Conference of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance was held in Berlin, Germany in June 1904. The main features of the second conference were the formation of "The International Woman Suffrage Alliance," and the adoption of the Declaration of Principles.
Third Conference of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance was held in Copenhagen, Denmark on August 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11, 1906. The Canadian National Association had been revived and had become a member. New national associations had been formed in Hungary and Italy and these had become members. The Congress voted upon the application of the new organization, called the Russian Union, which was unanimously accepted, and the Congress therefore had twelve affiliated associations in its membership. Fraternal delegates were present from friendly associations in Finland, Iceland and France, thus making fifteen countries represented. A committee was appointed at this Congress to attempt a union of Finnish societies for the purpose of affiliating with the Alliance. Later, the "Unionem" of Finland was admitted.
Sixth Conference of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance was held in June 1911 in Stockholm, Sweden. It was led by the organization's president, Carrie Chapman Catt.
The Seventh Conference of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance met in Budapest, Hungary, 15–21 June 1913. As had been the case with all the preceding International Woman Suffrage Alliance conferences, the location had been chosen to reflect the status of woman suffrage: a place where the prospects seemed favorable and liable to influence public sentiment by demonstrating that it was now a global movement. When it had been announced at the sixth congress that the next one would be held in the capital of Hungary, it was felt that the location seemed very remote, and there were concerns that Hungary did not have representative government. In fact, it proved to be one of the largest and most important conventions. Furthermore, the delegates stopped en route for mass meetings and public banquets in Berlin, Dresden, Prague and Vienna, spreading its influence ever further afield.
The Eighth Conference of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance occurred June 6–12, 1920, in Geneva, Switzerland.
Margherita Ancona was an Italian teacher and active in the women's suffrage movement in Milan. She was the secretary and later president of the radical bourgeois Comitato lombardo pro suffragio and member of the Italian branch of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA). One of the leaders of the Italian women's suffrage campaigns, she was the only Italian woman to serve in her era on the board of the IWSA and was as a delegate to the Inter-Allied Women's Conference of 1919.
The Inter-Allied Women's Conference opened in Paris on 10 February 1919. It was convened parallel to the Paris Peace Conference to introduce women's issues to the peace process after the First World War. Leaders in the international women's suffrage movement had been denied the opportunity to participate in the official proceedings several times before being allowed to make a presentation before the Commission on International Labour Legislation. On 10 April, women were finally allowed to present a resolution to the League of Nations Commission. It covered the trafficking and sale of women and children, their political and suffrage status, and the transformation of education to include the human rights of all persons in each nation.
Nettie L. White was an American suffragist and pioneer stenographer in Washington, D.C. She was one of the most active and ardent woman suffragists in Washington, serving as president of the District of Columbia Woman Suffrage Association, the oldest suffrage organization in the world. White was the only woman of the three official stenographers in the United States Bureau of Pensions, and the first woman ever appointed directly to a US$1,600/year position in the government service.
