When did women gain voting rights in Canada?

Most Canadian women won the federal vote in stages between 1916 and 1960, with full equality of voting rights confirmed only when Indigenous women gained the right to vote without losing Indian status in 1960. The Manitoba Act of January 28, 1916 (passed under Premier Tobias Norris) was the first provincial statute to give women the vote and the right to stand for election, followed by Saskatchewan and Alberta later in 1916. The federal Wartime Elections Act of 1917 gave the federal vote to women serving in the armed forces and to female relatives of soldiers, and the federal Act to confer the Electoral Franchise upon Women of 1918 (passed under Prime Minister Robert Borden) extended the federal vote to most women aged 21 or older.

Quebec was the last province to grant women the provincial vote, in 1940, under Premier Adelard Godbout. Indigenous women were excluded from federal voting alongside Indigenous men until 1960, when Prime Minister John Diefenbaker's government amended the Canada Elections Act to remove the disenfranchisement based on Indian Act status. Asian Canadians, Inuit Canadians, and other racialised minorities also gained the federal vote at various points, with Chinese and Japanese Canadians regaining the federal vote in 1947 and 1948 respectively after wartime disenfranchisement.

The first woman elected to the House of Commons was Agnes Macphail, who won Grey South-East as a United Farmers of Ontario candidate on December 6, 1921. Cairine Wilson became the first woman appointed to the Senate of Canada on February 15, 1930, made possible by the Persons Case (Edwards v. Canada) decided by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council on October 18, 1929. The Privy Council overruled the Supreme Court of Canada's 1928 ruling that women were not 'qualified persons' eligible for Senate appointment under the British North America Act, 1867. The Famous Five (Emily Murphy, Henrietta Muir Edwards, Nellie McClung, Louise McKinney, and Irene Parlby) brought the case.

Canadian women's voting rights were further entrenched in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982, with section 3 protecting the right to vote regardless of sex and section 28 guaranteeing equal application of all Charter rights to male and female persons. Section 28 cannot be overridden by section 33's notwithstanding clause. Federal voting age was lowered from 21 to 18 in 1970, applying equally to women and men. Women now make up about 30 per cent of the House of Commons and a higher proportion of the Senate, with parity caucuses and party-level commitments aimed at improving representation.