Women's long battle to vote in France and the generations who fought it

A woman in Paris casts her ballot in legislative elections on 10 November 1946, two years after women in France finally secured the right to vote. © AFP

This 21 April marks 80 years since women secured the right to vote in France. A wartime decree finally granted equal suffrage in 1944 – decades later than other European countries, and only after generations of women had demanded their democratic rights.

From Denmark to Azerbaijan, Germany to Georgia, Russia to the United Kingdom, swathes of Europe established at least limited voting rights for women in the 1910s.