Switzerland 

You may be surprised to learn that Switzerland was the last Western republic to grant the right to vote to women at the federal level. First, a referendum appeared before the (male) voters of Switzerland in 1959 and was soundly rejected, with 67% voting against universal suffrage. By 1971, the referendum passed, allowing women to vote at the federal level. The right to vote at a more local level was left up to Switzerland’s cantons, most of which approved it from 1959 to 1972, but the last canton to grant women’s vote in local issues was Appenzell Innerrhoden in 1991.

Portugal 

Portugal transitioned to a democracy in 1974 after a mostly bloodless revolution. With the drafting of the new constitution, women’s rights were to be included explicitly for the first time. For a brief moment in the early 1910s, women were allowed to vote if they could read and write and were considered the head of their household before it was explicitly outlawed. In 1976, the new democratic constitution gave equal voting rights to all citizens aged 18 and over. Despite having a later start, 35.7% of Portugal’s parliament is women (compared to 28% in the U.S. Congress in 2025).

Iraq

Women in Iraq had been demanding equal voting rights since the 1920s. The arguments against suffrage for them mirrored those faced by American and British women: that it was incompatible with their inborn nature and was against the correct social and cultural hierarchy where men were superior. Women’s organizations continued to fight throughout the 1940s and 50s before the Iraqi Provisional Constitution of 1970 gave all Iraqi citizens the right to vote. But implementation lagged, and it was not until 1980 that full suffrage was obtained. That year, sixteen of 250 seats in the ​​Iraq National Assembly were filled by women. 

Want to learn more about women’s liberation as well as women’s suffrage in Iran? Check out 1970s Unboxed.