When did Canadian women win the federal vote?

Most Canadian women won the federal vote on May 24, 1918 when the federal Act to confer the Electoral Franchise upon Women received royal assent (8-9 George V, c. 20). The Act came into effect for the December 6, 1921 federal election, the first in which most Canadian women voted. Sir Robert Borden's Union government had introduced the limited Wartime Elections Act in September 1917 (giving the federal vote to female relatives of soldiers), and the broader 1918 Act extended the federal vote to most Canadian women on the same basis as men.

The 1918 Act enfranchised any female British subject (by birth or naturalisation) over 21 years old who met the same residence and other requirements as men. The first federal election in which all eligible women could vote was the December 6, 1921 election, in which William Lyon Mackenzie King's Liberals defeated Arthur Meighen's Conservatives. About 1.5 million women were eligible to vote in 1921. The first woman elected to the House of Commons was Agnes Macphail (Progressive Party, Grey South-East, Ontario), elected on December 6, 1921.

Several groups of women remained disenfranchised until later. Quebec did not grant women the provincial vote until April 25, 1940 under Premier Adélard Godbout. Women in religious orders (women who had taken vows) were excluded in some jurisdictions until the 1940s. Indigenous women on reserves were excluded from federal voting until 1960 (when the Diefenbaker government extended the federal vote to status Indians without requiring loss of status). Inuit women received the federal vote in 1950. Women of Asian descent were excluded from BC and federal voting lists until 1948 (Chinese Canadians and South Asian Canadians) and 1949 (Japanese Canadians).

The Canadian women's suffrage movement had begun in earnest in the late 1870s with figures like Dr. Emily Stowe (the first woman doctor in Canada, founder of the Toronto Women's Literary Club in 1877) and her daughter Augusta Stowe-Gullen. Major suffrage organisations included the Canadian Suffrage Association (founded 1907 in Toronto by Flora Macdonald Denison and Augusta Stowe-Gullen) and the Manitoba Political Equality League (founded 1912). Provincial suffrage victories in Manitoba (January 28, 1916), Saskatchewan (March 14, 1916), Alberta (April 19, 1916), British Columbia (April 5, 1917), and Ontario (April 12, 1917) preceded the federal victory. Women's wartime contributions to the Canadian war effort, including in munitions factories and as Volunteer Aid Detachment nurses, helped erode opposition to suffrage. The 1918 Act was nonetheless not based on universal principle; the Wartime Elections Act and the subsequent extension reflected pragmatic political calculation as much as principle.