​Women's Suffrage and Resiliency

by Karallyn Fitisone
​
Defining Resilience. Cultivating resilience is a phenomenon that all living organisms, especially humans, have
been familiar with since the beginning of time. Resilience is associated with adjectives like toughness,
pliability, and elasticity. By definition, resilience is a word often given to individual or group objects and or
people that are able to withstand and recover from the often harsh realities of the world. Simply put, resilience
is so vital to our existence and our abilities to persevere. Challenges and adversity are inevitable in life, yet
humans have been able to navigate and adapt through these challenges via resiliency. It is no wonder why one
of the most popular topics in positive psychology and the social science discourse is surrounding resilience. 
Resilient Women & Women's Suffrage
For some populations, there have been more efforts to cultivate resilience as a response to a lack of basic human
rights. Women in particular have and still in some instances are being relegated to the backseat of contemporary
society and its many institutions. Women’s suffrage from a historical standpoint is a fairly recent development
for the modern world. As of 2022, voting for women is legal in all countries and territories, but one. However,
this isn’t to say that all countries and territories are actively encouraging or supporting women’s rights to vote.
Nonetheless, the right to vote for women in many countries, cultures, contexts, and cases has seen decades-long
fights for this civil liberty. Many scholars can agree that New Zealand was the first nation to grant women’s
suffrage in 1893, and the most recent country to allow women’s suffrage is Saudi Arabia in 2015. In between
these two dates lies 122 years of marches, protests, movements, unions, and overall, a complex combination of
ideas and events that ultimately led to women getting the right to vote. The overarching theme however, is
resilience. It is because of the resilience of women and allies of the movements, that we are able to explore and
continue exploring the narrative that women, like men, deserve all the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.
These achievements, a culmination of resiliency, hard work, passion, and compassion, represented potential for
future progress, social development, and legislation. Subsequently allowing society to examine more
fundamental questions about true universal suffrage and gender equity, that had not been investigated before. 
The Takeaway
As aforementioned, resiliency is the capability to forego difficulties and recover from them. Globally, women
are continuously affected with disparities in access to education, employment, reproductive health & rights,
maternal health, gender-based violence, livelihoods, and underrepresentation of which their male counterparts
are not subject to, experiencing to the degree that women are, or sometimes even aware of. As women have
gained suffrage, there have been subsequent positive outcomes for countries where they have seen economic
growth, increase in welfare, and less interstate conflicts. If women collectively decided to give in or give up
from the hardships, losses, stressors, or pressures of life, we would undoubtedly fail as a society. Even with the
myriad of challenges that women face, they continue to exceed the limitations, expectations, and ideals of
sexism or misogyny, through resilience. May we continue to honor and celebrate the victories of women,
encourage their success, and remain aware of the inequalities and dangers that they may face. In a world where
resiliency plays an integral role in our success and perseverance, let us build resilience by attaining meaningful
interpersonal relationships, practicing gratitude, learning from experiences, being proactive about problems,
remaining hopeful and optimistic about the future, and taking care of ourselves.