France, April 21 -- 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.

Finland enfranchised women even earlier, in 1906. On the other side of the world, Australia and New Zealand had opened voting to certain women in 1902 and 1893 respectively.

Yet in 1932, a French senatorwas still arguing in all seriousness: "Giving women the right to vote is a gamble, a leap into the unkno...