100 Years of Universal and Equal Suffrage

The faces of a man and a woman, separated by a line. On the left side of the coin the date 1.10.06; on the right, "20 FI 06" with the country abbreviation at the centre. The mint mark "M" appears to the left of each face.

Finland was the first country in the world to introduce universal and equal suffrage for men and women in 1906 — a watershed that reverberated far beyond Finnish history. Until then, Finland, which at the time belonged to the Russian Empire as an autonomous Grand Duchy, had a class-based system that excluded broad sections of the population from political life. The general strike of 1905, triggered by the Russian revolutionary movement, forced reforms: the Finnish parliament, the Diet, was fundamentally reorganised. With the Parliament Act of 1 July 1906, all Finnish citizens over the age of 24 received the right to vote and to stand for election — from then on, women could not only vote but also run as candidates. In the first elections in 1907, 19 women entered parliament.

This pioneering role is deeply anchored in Finland's self-understanding. The 1906 suffrage reform was not an isolated act but the expression of a broader social movement in which popular education, cooperatives and a strong civil society played a central role. Finland deliberately used the political scope available within the tsarist empire to push through progressive reforms that other European countries achieved only decades later — France, for instance, did not introduce women's suffrage until 1944. To mark the 100th anniversary of this electoral reform, Finland issued a 2-euro commemorative coin in 2006, recalling this milestone in the history of democracy.