The divergent aims of the struggle for women’s suffrage in Spain (1918–1924) (original) (raw)
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Votes for Women" was one of the most important demands in early European Women's Movements, advancing to a powerful image of women's liberation. In the wake of the political transformation after the French Revolution visionary thinkers of the European Enlightenment -like Olympe de Gouges ([1791] 1980: 44), Mary Wollstonecraft ([1792] 1989: 61f) or Gottfried Hippel (1792: 194) -had pointed out the scandalous exclusion of women from civil rights in Europe (Sledziewski 2006: 47). Soon after, political activists mobilized for women's emancipation and equal political rights. For many feminists, women's suffrage symbolised the full recognition of citizenship for women as members of the state with all rights and obligations. This idea of political participation relates to a strong narrative tradition of historical women's movements in different European countries. Furthermore, women's suffrage was an important issue for processes of democratisation, state-building and the rise of liberalism in general (Mayhall/Levine/Fletcher 2000: xv). However, a deeper historical and empirical enquiry into the relations of the (early) Women's movement shows some limits of this universal idea: Not only was the claim for 'the Vote' addressed to patriarchal national systems which systematically excluded women from the public sphere of political affairs, but it was itself a battlefield of unequal power distributions. In many national movements, main organizations and important leaders of the suffrage campaign demanded only a limited vote to the same conditions as men. That demand did not include working class women and it ignored the exclusion of working class men from suffrage. This discrepancy forced heated debates at international gatherings of Women's Movement Organizations (N.N., 12.09.1910, Gleichheit: 387f). A comparison of the German and the British Women's Movement offers insights into the deep impact of gender and class relations on the struggle for the vote in different political environments. This perspective explains different outcomes of the suffrage campaign in both countries after World War I and shows the importance of representation in social movements itself.