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In 1893 New Zealand became the first self-governing country where all women could vote in national elections. Others followed over the next decades: Finland in 1906, Britain in 1918 (only some women over 30), the United States in 1920 and Turkey in 1934. In most places the vote came after long campaigns.

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In New Zealand, then a self-governing British colony, the law was signed on 19 September 1893, after campaigners led by Kate Sheppard presented a petition with nearly 32,000 signatures. Women there could not stand for Parliament until 1919. In 1906 Finland, then a self-governing part of the Russian Empire, became the first place in Europe to give women the vote, and in 1907 its voters elected 19 women, the world's first women members of parliament. In Britain the Representation of the People Act 1918 gave the vote to women over 30 who met a property requirement; equal voting with men came in 1928. In Turkey women won the right to vote and stand in local elections in 1930 and in national elections on 5 December 1934. Women in France first voted in 1945 and in Italy in 1946, and Switzerland did not let women vote in federal elections until 1971.

Türkçe oku
Kendi kendini yöneten ülkeler arasında bütün kadınlara genel seçimlerde oy hakkı tanıyan ilk ülke, 1893'te Yeni Zelanda oldu. Başka ülkeler onu onlarca yıl içinde izledi: Finlandiya 1906'da, Britanya 1918'de (yalnızca 30 yaş üstü bazı kadınlara), ABD 1920'de, Türkiye 1934'te. Çoğu yerde bu hak uzun mücadelelerle kazanıldı.

Yeni Zelanda o sırada İngiltere'ye bağlı, kendi kendini yöneten bir koloniydi. Kadınlara oy hakkı veren yasa 19 Eylül 1893'te onaylandı; öncesinde Kate Sheppard'ın önderlik ettiği kampanya, 32.000'e yakın imza taşıyan bir dilekçe sunmuştu. Yine de oradaki kadınlar 1919'a kadar milletvekili adayı olamadı. Avrupa'da kadınlara oy hakkı tanıyan ilk yer, o sırada Rus İmparatorluğu'na bağlı özerk bir bölge olan Finlandiya oldu (1906). 1907 seçimlerinde meclise giren 19 kadın, dünyanın ilk kadın milletvekilleriydi. Britanya'da 1918 yasası, mülkiyet şartını karşılayan 30 yaş üstü kadınlara oy hakkı verdi; erkeklerle eşit oy hakkı 1928'de geldi. Türkiye'de kadınlar 1930'da yerel seçimlerde, 5 Aralık 1934'te de genel seçimlerde seçme ve seçilme hakkını kazandı. Fransa'da kadınlar ilk kez 1945'te, İtalya'da 1946'da oy kullandı; İsviçre ise federal seçimlerde kadınlara oy hakkını ancak 1971'de tanıdı.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Women's suffrage
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On the mainland, the last woolly mammoths died out around 10,000 years ago, as the Ice Age ended and the cold grasslands they lived on shrank. Two island populations held on much longer: one on St Paul Island in Alaska until about 5,600 years ago, and one on Wrangel Island until about 4,000 years ago, around 2000 BC. Rising seas had cut Wrangel off from Siberia, leaving some 300 to 1,000 animals alone there for thousands of years. These dates come from radiocarbon dating of bones and tusks, which measures how much of a slowly decaying form of carbon is left in them. Genetic studies show that the population was inbred but stayed stable for thousands of years, so its end seems to have come suddenly. What finally killed the last mammoths is still unknown.

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Oxford was teaching students more than three centuries before the Aztec Empire existed. Teaching there is recorded from 1096; the empire began around 1428, when three city-states in the Valley of Mexico, Tenochtitlan, Texcoco and Tlacopan, joined forces as the Triple Alliance.

Oxford has no founding date. There is evidence of teaching there in some form by 1096, and it grew quickly after 1167, when Henry II barred English students from the University of Paris. In 1209, after clashes with the townspeople, some scholars left for Cambridge and started the university there. The popular claim that Oxford is older than the Aztecs usually uses 1325, the year the Mexica people founded Tenochtitlan on an island in Lake Texcoco, where Mexico City stands today. But the Mexica became an imperial power only in 1428, when, together with Texcoco and Tlacopan, they defeated Azcapotzalco, the city that had dominated the valley. The empire lasted less than a century: Hernán Cortés and his Indigenous allies took Tenochtitlan in 1521.

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