Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928

The Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928 is a United Kingdom statute that granted women the right to vote on the same terms as men, lowering the female voting age from thirty, the threshold set by the Representation of the People Act 1918, to twenty-one, and removing the property qualifications that the 1918 act had still required of women voters. Its passage completed the process of British women's suffrage that had begun with the 1918 act, which had enfranchised only women over thirty who met a property qualification, and it added an estimated five million women to the electoral register. The act received royal assent on 2 July 1928 and took effect in time for the 1929 general election, the first in which women voted in equal numbers with men. It is often referred to in British political history simply as the Equal Franchise Act.