Women’s right to vote in Ontario

The Constitutional Act of 1791 conferred on British subjects who met certain criteria the right to vote in elections for the legislature of Upper Canada (present-day Ontario). The act did not specifically address gender and thus there was nothing to prevent women who met these criteria from voting. Nevertheless, the women of Upper Canada, who were subject to the conventions of common law and cultural restrictions, stayed away from the ballot boxes, except in a few cases. In May 1849 the reformist government of Robert Baldwin and Louis-Hippolyte La Fontaine changed the law, with almost no opposition, to prohibit women from voting in elections for the legislature and the municipal councils of the United Province of Canada. A suffragist movement took shape from the 1870s, first in Ontario, particularly under the leadership of Emily Howard Jennings. Women obtained the right to vote in this province in 1917 and the right to stand for election in 1919.