AP World History: Modern

## Learning Outcomes

- Explain how globalization helped expand access to **education** and **political participation** after **1900**
- Identify the role of **decolonization**, **democratization**, and **feminism** in widening rights
- Recall key international milestones such as **UNESCO (1945)**, the **Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)**, and **CEDAW (1979)**
- Distinguish between **formal rights** and **real participation**
- Use specific examples from India, South Africa, Cuba, and other regions in AP-style responses
- Analyze both **change** and **continuity** across the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries

## AP World History: Modern Syllabus

For the AP World History: Modern, you are expected to understand how globalization changed social structures by expanding access to education and political roles, with a focus on the following syllabus points:

- Know that after **1900**, more people gained access to schooling and political participation, especially women and previously excluded groups
- Identify how **women’s suffrage movements**, **civil rights movements**, and **feminism** widened political roles
- Explain how **mass education**, **literacy campaigns**, and girls’ schooling expanded in many states
- Understand the role of **international organizations** and human-rights language in spreading new expectations about equality
- Distinguish between **legal rights** such as suffrage and **actual influence** in politics
- Explain why older inequalities based on **gender, class, race, caste, ethnicity, and region** often continued
- Use specific examples such as **India’s universal adult franchise**, **South Africa’s 1994 multiracial democracy**, and **Cuba’s 1961 literacy campaign**
- Understand continuity and change over time by showing both major gains and major limits

## Test Your Knowledge

_Attempt these questions before reading this article. If you find some difficult or cannot remember the answers, look more closely at that area during your revision._

1. How did globalization help spread access to education after 1945?
2. What is the difference between women gaining the vote and women gaining real political power?
3. Name two international agreements or organizations linked to women’s rights or education.
4. Why did decolonization often expand political participation?
5. What inequalities continued even after legal reforms expanded rights?

## Introduction

From **1900 to the present**, one of the biggest social changes in world history has been the expansion of schooling and political roles to groups that had long been excluded. This change was connected to **globalization** because ideas, institutions, and movements crossed borders more quickly than before. Governments borrowed policies from each other. International organizations promoted literacy and equality. Activists used global language about rights, citizenship, and justice.

For AP World, this topic is not just about listing reforms. You need to explain the bigger pattern: access to education and political participation widened in many societies, especially for women, but older structures of inequality often remained. That is the key continuity-and-change argument.

> **Key Term: globalization**
> The growing worldwide movement of ideas, people, goods, and institutions across borders, especially strong after 1900.

### How education expanded and why it mattered

Education expanded because modern states needed literate citizens, trained workers, and more effective bureaucracies. This was true in industrial countries, communist states, and newly independent postcolonial nations. Schooling was not only about personal improvement. It was also about state-building.

After **1945**, this trend became stronger. Newly independent states in Asia and Africa saw mass education as a way to overcome colonial underdevelopment. Colonial rule had often limited access to higher learning because imperial powers did not want a large, politically aware local elite. After independence, leaders often reversed that pattern. Expanding schools meant producing teachers, civil servants, technicians, and voters.

> **Key Term: mass education**
> The large-scale expansion of schooling to broad populations rather than only elites.

International institutions helped make education a global goal. **UNESCO**, founded in **1945**, promoted literacy, education, and cultural cooperation. The **Universal Declaration of Human Rights** in **1948** declared education a right. That mattered because it changed the language of debate. Governments could no longer present schooling as a gift for the privileged only. It increasingly became something states were expected to provide.

> **Key Term: UNESCO**
> The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, founded in 1945 to promote education, literacy, science, and culture.

A strong example is **Cuba’s 1961 literacy campaign**. The Cuban government sent teachers and volunteers into rural areas to raise literacy rapidly. This shows how states used education to modernize society and spread political ideology at the same time. For AP purposes, that dual purpose matters. Education expanded, but it also served the state.

China offers another useful case. After **1949**, the communist government promoted literacy and widened educational access. This created more opportunities than before, especially for women and peasants. But the state also tightly controlled curriculum and political expression. So more schooling did not always mean more freedom.

> **Test Tip:** If a prompt asks about education, do not stop at “more schools were built.” Explain why states wanted education: modernization, national unity, trained labor, ideology, or postcolonial development.

Girls’ education is one of the clearest areas of change. In many societies, families had once prioritized boys’ schooling. Over the twentieth century, this gap narrowed in many regions because reformers argued that girls’ education improved family welfare, economic growth, and public life. Yet progress was uneven. Urban middle-class girls usually benefited first. Rural girls and poorer families often lagged behind.

This is a common AP distinction: expansion of access is not the same as equal outcomes. A state may open schools to girls, but if poverty, distance, or social expectations keep many from attending, equality remains incomplete.

### How political participation widened

Political roles expanded through several linked developments: suffrage reform, decolonization, democratization, civil rights activism, and feminist movements. In many regions, the franchise widened across the twentieth century so that more adults could vote, run for office, and join public life.

> **Key Term: suffrage**
> The right to vote in political elections.

Women’s suffrage spread globally in waves. **New Zealand** had already granted women the vote in **1893**, but the broader acceleration came in the early twentieth century. **World War I** and its aftermath were important because women took on public work in factories, offices, and support roles during wartime. This made it harder to argue that they belonged only in the home. By the interwar years, women gained voting rights in many parts of Europe, the Americas, and Asia.

The pattern was uneven. **Britain** granted partial female suffrage in **1918** and equal voting terms in **1928**. The **United States** passed the **19th Amendment** in **1920**. **Turkey** granted women full national voting rights in **1934**. **India**, when it became a republic in **1950**, adopted **universal adult franchise** from the start, which is one of the strongest AP examples of immediate postcolonial inclusion.

> **Key Term: universal adult franchise**
> The extension of voting rights broadly to adult citizens, without the older restrictions based on sex, property, or social status.

India matters because it shows a major change in political participation. Instead of granting rights slowly over decades, as many Western states had done, India began independence with a very broad electorate. That is a powerful example of decolonization expanding citizenship. But again, formal equality did not erase all barriers. Gender inequality, caste discrimination, and rural poverty continued to shape who could participate fully.

The same pattern appears in Africa. Many newly independent African states wrote women’s suffrage into their constitutions. Yet the existence of rights on paper did not automatically produce equal access to officeholding or policymaking. In many places, male elites still dominated parties and governments.

Communist revolutions also expanded women’s legal status in important ways. In **Russia**, **China**, and **Cuba**, women often received greater access to education, employment, divorce rights, and public roles than before. Communist ideology stressed equality in theory. Yet the reality was less complete. Top party leadership remained heavily male, and women often carried both paid labor and domestic work.

> **Test Tip:** In essays, distinguish between **formal political rights** and **substantive political participation**. A country may allow women to vote, but if parties, social norms, or authoritarian controls keep them from real influence, full equality has not been reached.

A major later example of widened participation is **South Africa**. Under apartheid, the Black majority was excluded from real political power. The **1994** democratic election ended white minority rule and brought full political participation to the Black majority. This is not only a civil-rights example but also a globalization-era case because anti-apartheid activism drew global support and international pressure.

### International rights language, feminism, and women in leadership

Globalization did not just spread products and technology. It also spread a language of rights. After **1945**, international agreements and organizations made women’s political equality part of global debate.

The **UN Charter** in **1945** affirmed equal rights of men and women. The **Commission on the Status of Women** was established in **1946**. The **Convention on the Political Rights of Women**, adopted in **1952** and effective in **1953**, was the first international treaty focused specifically on women’s equal political rights. **CEDAW**, adopted in **1979**, pushed states to confront discrimination more broadly. The **Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action** in **1995** made women’s participation and equality a major global policy issue.

> **Key Term: CEDAW**
> The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, a 1979 United Nations treaty aimed at improving women’s legal and social equality.

These agreements did not instantly change daily life, but they mattered in three ways. First, they created global standards activists could use. Second, they increased pressure on governments. Third, they helped connect local struggles to global movements.

Feminism also widened beyond suffrage. Earlier movements often focused on the vote and legal recognition. Later twentieth-century feminism demanded broader equality in education, employment, family law, and representation. That broader agenda is key for AP comparison. Students often compress all feminism into one stage, but exam responses are stronger when they show development over time.

The appearance of women in top leadership posts is another sign of change, though it must be handled carefully. **Indira Gandhi** in India, **Benazir Bhutto** in Pakistan, **Margaret Thatcher** in Britain, **Corazon Aquino** in the Philippines, and **Ellen Johnson Sirleaf** in Liberia all show that women could reach high office. But AP essays should avoid overstating this. A few famous leaders do not prove full equality for all women.

This is a classic complexity point. Representation at the top may change while wider structures remain unequal. A country may elect a woman leader and still limit women’s access to education, property, or local office.

### What stayed the same: limits, inequality, and uneven change

The most important continuity is that older inequalities often survived beneath new laws. Patriarchal expectations, racial hierarchy, caste divisions, class inequality, and authoritarian politics all limited how far legal reforms could go.

> **Key Term: patriarchy**
> A social system in which men hold more power than women in family, politics, and public life.

In education, rural and poor communities often lagged behind urban middle classes. Girls might gain legal access to school but still leave early because of household labor, poverty, or marriage expectations. In politics, women could gain the vote but remain underrepresented in legislatures and cabinets.

Ethnic and racial exclusion also persisted. In the United States, women’s suffrage in **1920** did not mean full political access for all women because many Black women in the South still faced voter suppression until later civil-rights reforms. In **South Africa**, white women had voting rights long before the Black majority gained equal political participation. This reminds you that AP responses must be specific. “Women got the vote” is often too vague.

Authoritarian states could also widen education while restricting freedom. China is a good example: literacy and schooling expanded, but dissent remained tightly limited. Afghanistan shows an even sharper contrast across time, with periods of expanded girls’ schooling interrupted by renewed restrictions under Taliban rule. That demonstrates uneven change and even reversal.

Communist systems reveal another continuity: theory and practice differed. Women gained important legal rights and educational access, but top power structures remained male-dominated. In capitalist societies, women gained access to work and officeholding, but wage gaps and unequal domestic expectations remained.

For AP World, this means your judgement should be balanced: globalization broadened access, but it did not erase hierarchy.

> **Key Term: continuity and change over time**
> An AP historical reasoning skill that explains what changed and what stayed the same across a period.

A high-level argument might say this: globalization spread the ideas and institutions of equality, citizenship, and education more widely than ever before, but local social structures and state power determined how fully those ideals became reality.

## Key Point Checklist

_This article has covered the following key knowledge points:_

- After **1900**, access to education and political participation expanded in many parts of the world
- **Globalization** spread ideas about literacy, rights, citizenship, and equality across borders
- **UNESCO (1945)** promoted education and literacy as international goals
- The **Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)** framed education as a right
- **Women’s suffrage** expanded globally in waves across the twentieth century
- **India** adopted **universal adult franchise** at independence in **1950**
- **Cuba’s 1961 literacy campaign** is a strong example of state-led expansion of education
- **South Africa’s 1994 election** expanded full political participation to the Black majority after apartheid
- International agreements such as the **Convention on the Political Rights of Women (1952)** and **CEDAW (1979)** strengthened global rights language
- Legal reform did not automatically create equal outcomes in schooling or politics
- Continuities included **patriarchy**, class inequality, racial discrimination, caste barriers, and authoritarian limits
- In AP essays, it is essential to distinguish between **formal rights** and **real participation**

## Key Terms and Concepts

- globalization
- mass education
- UNESCO
- suffrage
- universal adult franchise
- CEDAW
- patriarchy
- continuity and change over time


Continuity and Change in a Globalized World - Expanding access to education and political roles