Nasarwasalam, Iraq, January 30, 2005. Iraqi women set out to vote in the first "free" elections held in Iraq. Security for the polling site was provided by the Iraqi Security Force (ISF) and members of the US Marines Corps.
This timeline lists the dates of the first women's suffrage in Muslim majority countries. Dates for the right to vote, suffrage, as distinct from the right to stand for election and hold office, are listed.
Some dates relate to regional elections and where possible the second date of general election has been included. Even countries listed may not have universal suffrage for women, and some may have regressed in women's rights since the initial granting of suffrage.
It should be mentioned that for many of the nations listed below, the seeming "belatedness" of women's suffrage (relative to many European and North American nations) did not derive from Islamic politics, but rather from the fact that most of these nations were colonies of European empires for much of the twentieth century and thus had no suffrage until winning national independence. Often national independence and woman's suffrage occurred simultaneously.
^Pipes, Richard (1997). The Formation of the Soviet Union: Communism and Nationalism, 1917-1923. Harvard University Press. p. 81. ISBN9780674309517.
^Tadeusz Swietochowski. Russian Azerbaijan, 1905-1920: The Shaping of a National Identity in a Muslim Community. Cambridge University Press, 2004. ISBN 0521522455, 9780521522458, p.144