Happy Mother's Day!

As today is mother's day I thought I could do some statistics about women's suffrage in Switzerland. On a federal level women's suffrage was introduced in 1971, but on a cantonal level the situation is much more complicated. This is how it worked in a nutshell:

  • The first women could vote on a cantonal level in 1959
  • By 1970 more than 50% of all women could vote
  • Just two years later 99% of women could vote
  • Then nothing changed for 16 years
  • Finally in 1990 last canton (Appenzell Innerrhoden) gave women the right to vote.
  • The whole process took 31 years!

I did some plots that show how the percentage of women that could vote on a cantonal level changed over time. For the years before 1971 I could not find the the demographics data about the female population, so I used the data from 1971 for the years before that. I guess the relative sizes of the cantons did not change too much during the 12 years that are relevant. So here are the plots: