https://www.loc.gov/item/2016878768/ https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-plain-speaker-proof-of-publishing/131141801/ Women's nationality encompasses the history and conditions under which a woman was entitled to nationality, or an individual, legal identity as a subject or national of a sovereign state. Nationality defines a woman's membership in a country, rather than the socio-politico-civil rights she is entitled to from being a citizen of a state, or the ethnic group with which she may affiliate. In the field of international law, nationality statutes were codified in the nineteenth century using customary practices and religious law to define who were members of the state and who were foreigners. Sex discriminatory laws relating to the acquisition, retention, and transmission of nationality were adopted in almost every country in the world. Based on a premise of women's subordination to men, dependent nationality was implemented as a protection for family units and required married spouses to have the same nationality. These laws required a woman to gain the nationality of her husband upon marriage and lose her own nationality, so that their children had a distinct path to the nationality of the father. Unmarried women were often denied the right to immigrate based upon fear that they could not support themselves and their children's nationality was often undefined. Conflicts in the various nationality laws gave rise to statelessness, creating a class of people who could not obtain protection or diplomatic assistance from any nation.
Women's rights activists recognized that for them to gain civil rights domestically, and not arbitrarily lose rights by automatic naturalization in another country, independent nationality was essential. Having their own nationality would also allow women to pass on their nationality to their children, regardless of whether those children were legitimate. From the early twentieth century, activists began pressing for change in international law. The Inter-American Commission of Women worked with women's rights organizations globally to compile a legal comparison of laws and lobbied the League of Nations to address the issues. In 1933, their work led to adoption by the Pan-American Union of the first international agreement on women's rights, the Convention on the Nationality of Women, which provided that nationality of a woman did not change upon marriage within the Americas. Continued activism throughout the century led to the adoption of numerous international treaties and conventions to protect nationality and prevent arbitrary denaturalization, such as the Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons (1954), the Convention on the Nationality of Married Women (1957), the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness (1961), the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965), the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979), and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989). There are still some countries which do not allow women to have individual nationality and prohibit children from acquiring nationality from their mothers.