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Swedish Women's Struggle for Suffrage
The Struggle for Women’s Franchise – a Ménage à Trois of Women, Men and the State - by Josefin Rönnbäck, Ph.D.

Swedish Women's Struggle for Suffrage

The Struggle for Women’s Franchise – a Ménage à Trois of Women, Men and the State - by Josefin Rönnbäck, Ph.D.

The struggle for women’s franchise – a struggle in two parts

By investigating the organised struggle for women’s franchise and placing this struggle in relation to that for men’s political rights, one can shed light on the Swedish process of democratization from a gender perspective. A gender pattern will then appear, showing that sex was extremely important in this connection. For instance, men’s franchise was separated from women’s franchise. Moreover, men’s franchise was treated as an issue superior to that of women’s franchise. Before giving even one woman the political right to vote, the Members of Parliament as a group gave priority to an extension of franchise rights for men. This priority indicates that men’s relations to politics and the state were considered different from those of women.

During the process of democratization, a movement for franchise emerged, whose primary aim was to support men’s political rights, Sveriges allmänna rösträttsförbund (‘The General Association for Franchise in Sweden’, SARF) in cooperation with a movement that worked exclusively for women’s political rights, Landsföreningen för kvinnans politiska rösträtt (‘The National Association for Women’s Franchise’).

A franchise meeting

However, this separation was not complete and there were individual overlapping and forms of collaboration between women and men on an organisational basis. Neither did these movements for franchise differ completely - rather were they movements that shared a common interest. The question is - to what extent did the struggle for women’s franchise differ from men’s?

The two organisations were similarly structured and consisted of local associations that were capable of making statements on various issues. The organising itself went faster among the franchise women. A distinct organisational structure was established within a year, which was also the time it took to create a national association. The key to this organisational success was probably that the establishment of LKPR came later, when the popular movements had already entered into a process of maturation. The suffragettes utilized their overlapping memberships in other associations to cooperate with other women’s movements, social liberal movements for adult education, the temperance movement and the labour movement. As a result, LKPR succeeded in reaching out to a great number of people, spreading their message - political rights for women.

Parade of equal franchise in Strängnäs

The franchise movements seem to have worked similarly, utilising the same kinds of vehicles for propaganda as most of the popular movements. The fact that women had no part in parliamentary work makes an apparent difference in this context. Another significant difference was that women had to rely more on their collaboration with men than the other way around. Compared with their male equivalents, the franchise women in Sweden may have done more of a quiet indoor work.

The men’s franchise movement comprised considerably more members and a slightly different class structure – more labourers were working members.

Prime Minister Nils Edén: “… men and women should be working together … for the good of the nation”, 1918.

Similar to the women’s movement for suffrage, men’s franchise movement can be considered as a strategic coalition with the common denominator of working towards an extension of franchise for the inclusion of more people. Both movements worked in close alliance with party political organisations where memberships overlapped. There were as well some personal bonds between the movement for men’s and women’s franchise. Some franchise women participated in the people’s parliaments in the 1890s, and, originally, several male MP advocates of women’s franchise (who in addition were members of Männens förening för kvinnans politiska rösträtt (‘The Men’s Association for Women’s Political Franchise’) came from the male movement for political franchise. A vital difference is that the male franchise movement (SARF) originated from a party political organisation, Frisinnade landsföreningen (‘Liberal National Association’). LKPR emanated from Svenska kvinnors medborgarförbund (‘The Swedish Women’s Citizens' Association’) and several prominent women participating in the struggle for franchise also engaged themselves in the formation of Frisinnade kvinnor (‘Liberal Women’) in 1914.

The struggle for franchise – a struggle with national overtones

As in several other countries, the matter of franchise was a dividing issue among women, as it comprised aspects of class and gender. In contrast, ethnical conflicts did not take up a great deal of space of the political debate in Sweden, since the country, most likely, was regarded as culturally homogeneous. The issue of women’s franchise was, in this respect, less complicated in Sweden. Unlike several other countries, there was only one organisation (LKPR) that presented itself as an organisation that worked exclusively and primarily for the women’s franchise.

The organised movement for franchise in Sweden began almost half a century later than those in Britain and the United States, and it developed in much shorter time. Unlike Sweden, issues of franchise had in some countries, as in Sweden’s neighbouring countries Finland and Norway, become intricately intertwined with the struggle for national independence. Yet nationalism served as an ideological superstructure and motive also to the Swedish movement for franchise. The struggle for franchise was about the national identity in Sweden, on an individual as well as a collective level. Franchise was regarded both as a symbol of individual women’s majority and national citizenship and as one showing national foresight and degree of civilization. According to the suffragists, women’s franchise was a sign of social progress. There were as well undercurrents of ethnocentric dreams in these conceptions.

Anna Whitlock: "Together with the men, for the country"

Similar to many franchise movements in other countries, LKPR chose to act in favour of obtaining the women’s right to vote – later, also their eligibility – under the same conditions as those concerning the men. This choice was not appreciated by social democratic women in Sweden, and the international socialist congress urged its members to distance themselves from movements whose programmes lacked the question of general suffrage. Thus, the class conflict in Sweden existed also on an international level. Striving for franchise under the same conditions as men signalled that the current class order was accepted and that certain people were excluded due to low income. This shows that LKPR’s primary goal was to achieve a gender neutral constitution. This meant in reality that the issue of women’s franchise was adapted to that of the men and that LKPR worked for the achievement of political rights to some, but not all, women. LKPR emphasized that this was a party politically neutral orientation, though the orientation in reality became that of the Liberal Party. The party neutral rhetoric was in more than one aspect nothing more than mere rhetoric.

To reach the goal of obtaining women’s franchise and eligibility under the same conditions as those of men, LKPR roused public opinion, using means of lobbying and propaganda that were common in many other countries. What is also worth noting is that local political rights were used as battering rams and that the Swedish members were encouraged to participate in party political activism. LKPR was then an alternative to party politics. Moreover, LKPR formed part of party politics in a unique way. The national association provided instruction for women in an attempt to arouse their interest in party politics, and it contributed to the “infiltration” of women into the male party system even before the political right to vote was received. Nor did Swedish franchise women choose the strategy of combatting the Governments in office and they arranged comparatively few protest meetings. Instead, the Swedish franchise movement LKPR co-operated with the Governments by sending them letters of gratitude when Members of the Parliament had done something for the cause. LKPR worked very closely to the Liberal Party, especially during the second half of the franchise movement. It was not until the end of the franchise movement that the moderate conduct and patience gave out, in particular in relation to the right-wing members in the First Chamber. Sending letters of protest and arranging meetings of protest, LKPR’s tone was hardened in 1918.

The Swedish suffragists were renowned, among their contemporaries, for their organisational apparatus within the international franchise movement, International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA).

International congress for suffrage in Stockholm 1911

As the Swedish suffragists created a solid infrastructure, resources could be devoted to a large-scale work of citizen instruction. Considering the fact that the voting rules and voting procedure were circumstantial and complicated in the beginning of the 20th century, LKPR’s work for adult education was a significant move in the process of democratization. According to the franchise women themselves, their citizen education was “Swedish” and the only of its kind – it seems, however, that similar courses were held in other countries.

There were, then, “female” as well as “Swedish” ingredients in this movement, showing that LKPR differed from their male equivalent and from women’s franchise movements abroad. The co-operative and consensus-oriented attitude was conspicuously apparent. Compared with other countries, the process of democratization in Sweden was at once similar and different. It might have been less aggressive and more coherent than in other countries.

The only countries in Europe where women have acquired political franchise

Not in one single country did women receive their political right to vote earlier than the men. Some of the white middle-class women received their right to vote in the end of the 19th century – in most countries, women obtained this right around the 20th century, but there are still, in the 21st century, women lacking this right (in Brunei, Afghanistan, Iraq). As a whole, women have got their political rights hundreds of years, or rather thousands of years, after the men’s receipt of these rights. However, considering that Swedish men obtained general suffrage (1909), the year when women got the same right under equivalent conditions (1921) is lagging behind by twelve years. This demonstrates that there is an impact of gender – however not to an extent as great as in countries like USA, France, Australia and Switzerland – where women’s franchise lagged behind men’s franchise by a considerably longer time. This is particularly interesting considering that countries like these are sometimes – erroneously – called the cradle of modern democracy. As a matter of fact, these are persistent myths and there are reasons to problematize and revise theories about the nature of democratization waves by considering gender and ethnicity in that context.

LKPR and the gender boundaries in politics

The mere existence of the organisation of women’s politics, LKPR, challenged a well established gender order in politics. LKPR was a living example in the context of showing that women were able and willing to be regarded as political participants and that they belonged to political arenas. Franchise women showed that politics also concerned women, and that it was only by appearance that the gender of politics was male. LKPR – the organisation itself – can also be viewed as an expression of protest against the male franchise movement and the male-dominated party system – ultimately an expression of protest against men as a group, taking their handling of women’s right to vote up to then into consideration. It can therefore be more or less claimed that a gender-political insurrection was introduced by the women who united in Stockholm in 1902 to establish Föreningen för kvinnans politiska rösträtt (‘The Association for Women’s Political Franchise’), of which only women could be the members.

According to the political scientist Maud Eduards, women transgress the boundary of what is accepted when they act as a group. On such occasions, they expand definitions of legitimate experiences and of the nature of politics. By organising themselves for the purpose of gaining political rights, hence appearing as a group and a political category, LKPR made it obvious that there is a gender dimension in politics and that the political arenas – the Parliament, the local authorities, the county council, the political parties – were the arenas for men. They showed, furthermore, that there was a citizenship, whose specific rights and obligations were reserved for men. LKPR’s demands elucidated men’s failure to pursue the question of women franchise, and that there was a discrepancy between the political ideologies and the political practice – or rather between men’s political rhetoric and practice. LKPR demonstrated then that the priority of men was unlike that of women and that there was a conflict of interest between the sexes. LKPR’s opinion was that these conflicts made it impossible for a man to represent a woman at all levels.

Frida Stéenhoff
Why must women be kept waiting?

LKPR negotiated the boundaries of politics – in terms of form and content – by claiming suffrage and eligibility. The franchise women objected to the distinction, i.e. the segregation by gender implying the inclusion of men in the political and decision-making sphere and a parallel exclusion of women. They also questioned the male norm for what politics is and should be, and that voting for the parliament presupposed male gender. They protested against men’s self-imposed right, the alleged priority of men’s interpretation in a political context, and the legitimacy of the male political system. They disagreed with women being objects rather than subjects in the legislative process. They also objected to the order of priority - that men should obtain political rights prior to women. It could be argued, then, that the franchise women questioned the gender contract, which, by the turn of the century was manifest in the Swedish Parliament Act, implying that only men could act as citizens in public political life.

LKPR also questioned the political demarcation allowing the presence of women in certain political arenas, but not in others. The association demonstrated the lack of logic shown in the circumstance that women had the right to vote in municipal elections but not for the parliament, and that women were eligible for the local government but not for the national one. It is however essential to emphasize that LKPR, as a socio-political movement, did not only want to change the form of politics, i.e. the rules and actors of political performance, but also the content of politics. LKPR’s activity and influence on public opinion indicate that the association wanted to push the limits of politics, thus turning more questions into becoming a national concern.

Not only did LKPR argue for formal rights but also for women’s participation in decisions concerning them, proposing that there should be a “politics of presence”. The franchise women were as well “eligibility women”, striving for the assessment of franchise and eligibility - to be represented and to represent.

Circular 78, 1911

It was far from obvious that LKPR would promote women’s eligibility at all levels. Conflicts of interest concerning gender, class and party ideologies emerged, in particular during the second half of the struggle for franchise as this was the period when women began to ally themselves with the party political organisations to a greater extent than earlier. Party politicization involved possibilites as well as limitations for women as a group. It resulted in women taking place in new arenas, getting new, institutional possibilites of acting for other political claims – however under circumstances that intensified opposition among women, whose group formation was accordingly split up. Women could be played off against each other as the party system grew stronger and more women entered the party political arena.

During the struggle for franchise, gender boundaries were crossed by more women involving themselves in political parties. Women were encouraged by LKPR to speak out and claim their place in party political organisations, poor relief boards, committees, city councils. LKPR’s practical activity shows, moreover, that in their struggle for assessing the status of being a national citizen women acted as if they were already political citizens.

Power and resistance

Franchise women were met with various kinds of resistance – on the one hand, a resistance governed by the principle implying that women and politics were completely incompatible, on the other a temporary resistance, meaning that the epoch or the woman were immature and that, to begin with, there were other questions to be solved. Moreover, the franchise women were confronted with a silent resistance. The resistance and the reprimands demonstrate that some people felt that the franchise women and the organisation LKPR had gone too far, crossing the line between what was considered as appropriate for women and what was not.

"“The New Kingdom”. When the masculine cultural world has faded away
(Stockholms Dagblad, 22/4 1909)

Those daring to call for women’s political rights broke prevalent criteria for social behaviour. Women’s franchise stirred up the order of gender, present in conceptions of maleness and femaleness, with the result that men advocating women’s franchise were accused of being feminine while the female equivalents were considered masculine women. The most conservative parliamentary members publicly expressed their concern for a feminization of the state and wanted to keep women and topics that could be associated with femininity off the state.

This demonstrates that conceptions of gender were significant in the democratization process, and that the struggle for franchise was a struggle for power concerning much more than the rules and form of politics. Suffrage supporters regarded, together with the opponents, franchise as a means of carrying through a political work of progress and a change in the content of politics.

The resistance was divided but strong and expressed itself in a variety of ways that amounted to the maintenance of existent gender boundaries in politics. Certain opponents claimed that some women (as individuals) were well suited to politics but that women (as a group) were not, and they were of the opinion that this was an argument which itself proved that all women should be categorically excluded from politics.

Franchise and eligibility also challenged the gender order in different ways. Eligibility – which meant that a woman could be elected as Member of Parliament - was unthinkable for a long period of time (the Swedish word ‘riksdagsman’ indicates a male gender). Not until it was made quite clear that women would obtain an extended eligibility in municipal contexts did LKPR enter the issue of eligibility on its programme. LKPR’s claims on women’s eligibility and work in practice for women’s political representation challenged the men in “their” arenas. An elected woman meant de facto an excluded man.

Conflict and consensus

Landsföreningen för kvinnans politiska rösträtt (‘The National Association for Women’s Franchise’) was anxious to bridge the class divide and to appear as party politically neutral though it was led by a circle of middle-class women with liberal values. Despite conspicuous class and party political differences, and in contrast to the franchise women’s clashing views on the Association’s attitude to men as a group and the male party system, the members of the organisation were capable of keeping themselves together during the entire period.

This was the realisation of the fact that the Association’s members agreed, on an overarching level, that women had a potential for change in politics, that women were subordinated, and that the question of franchise was associated with issues of justice and public welfare. The Association’s wish was to gain consensus and collaboration among women and between women and men. It was agreed that the Association was to transgress the boundaries of class, that it should be free from party politics and “neutral”. The only problem was that meanings attached to the concept of neutrality differed among the members. Discussions disclosed that there were separate opinions on the subject of the nature of politics, how politics was to be conducted, and by whom. Should politics be built on meritocracy - or on democracy and the active participation of many people?

In reality, the franchise women did not agree on the Association’s goal – were there to be political rights to all women or to only a few of them? Neither did they agree on the issue of how to work for women’s franchise in the best possible way – if the organisation was to be based on a distinction between sexes or on collaboration. Their opinions also differed on the question of how to approach the party system and whether the Association should participate in the election campaigns. The opinions were also divided on the issue whether the Association should only work for political rights or if it should be involved with additional political concerns. The question was solved by deciding that members were to work with men as well as without them, and that the Association was to act outside the party system as well as in cooperation with certain parties (read the Liberal party). A further solution was to include questions for the sake of raising the standard of general education.

LKPR’s activity gives the impression that the Association was trying to “societalize” women and make them more interested in socio-political issues, but there was also an interest in making women more active, using their citizenship to better adapt society to women, i.e. to “feminize” society. The work with general education shows that, for the women, LKPR was anxious to gain more than a bundle of rights and the mere status as citizens. The education would give women the knowledge and self-confidence needed for the management of their citizenship and the exploitation of their rights. Behind these concerns we can see the expectations that women would act as driving forces behind more issues than the current ones, thus widening the political field.

LKPR’s practice made it obvious that there was an additional gender dimension in politics, a dimension consisting of ideas prescribing that men and women should cooperate. According to the social scientist Maud Eduards, heteronormativity, i.e., the conception that collaboration between men and women is something desirable as well as natural, is a central principle of democratic order. This idea of cooperation is a norm resting on the thought that women and men are different and that they are complementary to each other. Cooperation or collaboration can be regarded as a method used for the purpose of reaching consensus. However, according to Eduards, on most occasions this is something dictated to women out of men’s conditions. In reality, it is a norm implying the expectation that women should cooperate with men – but not the other way around. For several reasons, the norm was more imperative for women than it was for men. To put it frankly - men were continually offered the opportunities to act independently of women.

Hand in hand - at home and in the state. Postcard.

LKPR celebrated, defended, and argued for the collaboration between men and women, and some of the franchise women tended to speak in terms of consensus; more specifically, about the significance in promoting mutual understanding between the sexes. Also the practical activity shows that the franchise women by large chose to act from a principle of “heteronormativity” in support of the current norm of collaboration. The creation of Männens förening för kvinnans politiska rösträtt (The Men’s Association for Women’s Political Franchise) is, together with the fact that franchise leaders recommended election lists from the male party system, concrete examples of this principle. Organisations based on the principle of difference, special lists for women in municipal elections, and the votes on a female party as franchise was gained, show, on the other hand, that this norm was questioned to a certain degree and that there were other ways of acting during the struggle for franchise – alternative ways that were based on gender political concerns. It should also be mentioned that it was the LKPR “party women” that to a great extent advocated a cooperation with the male party members, and that, primarily, it was the partyless franchise women who distanced themselves from this norm of collaboration.

Franchise women’s collaboration with men was at once voluntary and enforced. The collaboration was ideologically conditioned and an expression of pragmatical concerns. Despite the fact that they were not quite reliable as allies, LKPR was anxious to have a good relationship with the political parties - at least with some of them.

Liberalism, maternalism and nationalism

LKPR used several arguments to convince others about the legitimacy in the claim that women should get their political rights under the same conditions as men. Some of these arguments – though far from all – can be recognized from the male franchise movement and from other - female - movements for suffrage.

John Stuart Mill: John Stuart Mill: "…Under whatever conditions, and within whatever limits, men are admitted to the suffrage, there is not a shadow of justification for not admitting women under the same".

Like franchise movements in other parts of the world, LKPR was inspired by a liberal discourse on the nature of citizenship - based on the individual, and stressing the equal right of value and to integrity and self-determination for all men and women. Another implication of the liberal discourse on the nature of citizenship was the view that the state should not consider an individual citizen’s birth or financial position, only his or her personal competence. The ideological superstructure of political liberalism claimed that all individuals should be treated equally before the law, with similar opportunities of manifesting themselves. LKPR’s obvious point of departure was that women are equal to men in value, i.e. that the Constitution shall be gender neutral. It should be possible to put women to the test on an individual basis. LKPR emphasized the fact that women and men have equal needs and rights to expressing their opinions freely, deciding for themselves what to do with their lives. LKPR’s reasoning thus moves beyond traditional boundaries of gender.

Ann Margret Holmgren: “Listen and you will hear the call for maternal affection everywhere in public life…”]

The women’s franchise movement was also, as in many other countries, inspired by ideas of maternalism, where the mother figure was exploited as a national symbol. Like other contemporary women’s movements, LKPR called attention to the fact that women should obtain franchise due to their unique nature and experience as mothers. In other words: LKPR adopted gender-conditioned arguments. It might be suggested that LKPR, by utilizing images of the Good Mother and the good home as metaphors for the nation, simplified abstract reasoning in an attempt to concretize modes where women could be useful in politics without shaking the gender order to its very foundations. This political arguing expresses in itself an interesting paradox – on the one hand, the wish to change and create new gender relations – on the other, the use of the traditional gendered division of domestic labour as a model. This radical women’s organisation’s turn away from the old order concurred with their use of the same order as a model for the future.

Together with the whole process of democratization, the women’s movement for franchise was also influenced by the ‘Swedification’ process, and democratization became part of the creation of a homogeneous nation state. As in several other countries, nationalistic ideas and conceptions proved to be important and useful in the struggle for women’s franchise. Appearing in the formal language, the concept of nationalism produced rhetorical strategies to support and encourage the mobilization of women’s franchise.

Public meeting, 13 May 1917

The franchise women were not able to explain why women – as part of the Swedish people and members of the nation – had no place of their own in the nation. LKPR’s activity disclosed the conspicuous gap between the nation and the state. Franchise was not only regarded as a symbol of political citizenship, but also of national citizenship. Franchise women thus set out from women’s national identity in their claims to political rights. LKPR referred as well to processes of democratization in other countries, showing that the Parliament Act was badly suited with the new society – the forthcoming modern industrialized Sweden. LKPR persisted then in arguing that women should acquire franchise on grounds of their similarity with, and difference from, men.

The Association hence drew attention to similarities between women and men: they were, to an equal extent, employed outside home, good citizens and taxpayers. As Swedish citizens, women shared with the men an equally strong interest in and need for expressing their own opinions. At the same time, LKPR claimed that there were important distinctions between men and women, comprising, for instance, their experience, involvement and position in society. Also, they were believed to cover differing areas of competence, with the effect that they were complementary to each other. Women and women’s experiences appeared as unexploited resources. It was implicitly taken for granted that women were not to compete with men on their arenas merely because they had acquired their political rights. Prominence was instead given to the interdependence of public society and the private sphere, and of the men and the women.

The franchise women expressed then their political opinions out of their experience of being good and useful citizens: that they were treated differently; denied the rights that should belong to their status as citizens. There was a pronounced ambition to bring women and citizenship together – of making citizenship comprising women “as such”, i.e. in universal terms. Referring to similarities as well as differences, LKPR at once questioned and confirmed the dubious belief that citizenship was gender neutral. They showed and argued for the possibility that there were many, different, ways of being and acting as a citizen. Indirectly, franchise women advocated the right of being individual and different.

“Standstill despite advancement”

In the franchise movement’s initial phase, municipal, county council and parliamentary political rights were stratified by financial position and gender. In 1902, Verner von Heidenstam composed the following words in the poem Medborgarsång: “Det är skam, det är fläck på Sveriges baner – att medborgarrätt heter pengar (”’Tis a blot on our flag that we reckon worth / By wealth, and poor men are no men” - Quotation from Verner von Heidenstam, “New Poems. III. Fellow-Citizens”, Sweden’s Laureate: Selected Poems, transl. by Charles Wharton Stork (New Haven: Yale U P,1919)). This was also the year when the organised struggle for women’s political rights was introduced, and Föreningen för kvinnans politiska rösträtt (‘The Association for Women’s Political Franchise’) was established. The smaller the amount of capital, the fewer were a man’s political rights. Political franchise was thus conditioned by a “financial citizenship”, i.e. an income or a real estate of one’s own, in addition to a “civilian citizenship” based on autonomy and authority. Another condition was the male gender.

Many things, however, changed in the course of struggling for franchise, a change that included the prerequisites of women’s participation in the process of democratization. One of the most important changes was the introduction of the proportional election system in 1909. This contributed to the introduction of the Swedish multi-party system, which, to a great extent, relies on party political compromises. Moreover, it has become evident that a greater number of women were represented in countries with proportional elections than in countries with a majority representation system – even though this effect was long in coming. The contemporaneous establishment of the parliamentary system had the effect that the royal family became less influential and that the parliament’s position in the exercise of power was strengthened. The parliamentary constitution was altered, and so were the state’s role and obligations. This had as a result that the political field was widened and that socio-political issues came to gain more and more significance.

It can be noted, however, that there were further changes of political gender issues. There was an interest in women as electors already when they struggled for franchise, that is, before they acquired political franchise.

A political address [on women’s political franchise] at Älghult and Hohult in 1913]

Women were accepted as speakers and invited to making their speeches at public political meetings, and they participated in election campaigns. Women became eligible for municipal politics and some of them were in fact elected into local authority assemblies. In 1913, women had the possibility of becoming members of any political party organisation. This means that the party system (being the creation by and for men) and the self-assumed male gender in party politics loosened as the struggle for franchise developed, partly because certain political parties were affected by the demands coming from women’s politics. Women were united already in the struggle for franchise, establishing their own party political bodies, like Moderata kvinnor (‘Conservative Women’), Frisinnade kvinnor (‘Liberal Women’) and Socialdemokratiska kvinnokongressen (‘The Social Democratic Women’s Congress’), at the side of the men’s party political organisations.

Importantly, it can be concluded that gender in politics has varied, to a certain degree and depending on the context. Considered as more “feminine”, municipal politics was opened to women, while county councils and the parliament were reserved to men. It was all very well as long as women were placed at lower levels of the political system, but it was not when women wanted to enter the political and legislative stronghold, hence becoming representatives of the state. Women were not allowed to become the expressions of “politics incarnate”.

Hence, gender boundaries were not kept intact and LKPR used every possible loophole to break through these constructs. The historian Yvonne Hirdman confirms this strategy in her statement that the reason why women have been kept down cannot be explained by a lack of capability but instead by an absence of possibilities. Women are found in new fields as soon as barriers soften or disappear.

The process of democratization was in many ways a “bloodless revolution” that altered the rules of the political game, in great as in little things. Conditions and requirements of how men – but especially women – were to conduct politics were then changed. Even though these changes were manifold and important there were, at the same time, currents of continuity flowing through the process of democratization. Was the revolution then a revolution undone? Notions of gender changed – but could it be that these were changes taking place on the surface of society? Women continued to be regarded as females and sexual beings in the first place - that is, they were seen as the representatives of their sex or of a separate interest; they were not seen as human beings or individuals, or as the representatives for the public good. Women were interested in caring and nursing issues – the result of a self-fulfilling expectation. This was, in effect, in line with the general imagination of femininity. It could therefore be suggested that LKPR and other women’s organisations of those days have contributed to creating the breeding-ground for the long-lasting political sex-typing of jobs. That women came to obtain political rights under the same conditions as men was nothing less than a gender political revolution – even though some gender patterns persisted and, for several years, men continued to represent humanity and the public good, making women the representatives of no more than their own gender and separateness. It can be argued, then, that the struggle for franchise can be considered as a “standstill despite advancement”.

Conclusion: Political history, gender history, women’s history

With the struggle for franchise as the point of departure it is, then, possible to analyse the role played by gender in the process – the process of democratization – when the content and meaning of citizenship were discussed and the boundaries in politics were changed. An elucidation of the women’s struggle for franchise problematizes concepts that at first sight might appear as gender neutral, such as citizenship and democracy, showing how they were permeated by notions of gender.

To simplify one might consider the struggle for franchise as a domestic drama - a ménage à trois of women, men and the state. For many reasons, Landsföreningen för kvinnans politiska rösträtt (‘The National Association for Women’s Franchise’, LKPR) had the starring role in the drama, representing women as a group – especially in view of the fact that LKPR was the first women’s organisation of considerable size that acted for an expansion of women’s room for manoeuvre. LKPR became in fact the first large women’s organisation in Sweden, working at the same time at a local, national and international level. Over the years, more than 300 local associations were established in different places, with a peak of more than 17,000 members.

The ‘drama’ was concurrently staged in several places and one can choose to direct the attention to the two chambers of the Parliament, the (male) party political organisations and the men’s franchise movement, and/or to the franchise women and their work on the local or national level. The attention has in this context been drawn primarily to the activity pursued in LKPR’s arenas, for instance at their head quarters at Lästmakaregatan in Stockholm and in public meeting places all over Sweden.

To the Government…”

Another important collective actor in this connection was of course the Parliament, which, together with the Government and the Parliament Act, had the authority to represent the state and its policy. The actions of the state are of great significance since these regulate the content and scope of the civil rights. Norms are transferred, and relations between citizens, and between men and women, are regulated through legislation – or by the absence of legislation. Thus, the Parliament, i.e., the state, is constantly present in processes that construct gender. In this ménage à trois, it is at times hard to distinguish the state from the men. Bonds between men and the state were in fact very close at the beginning of the 20th century. The public was, on the whole, an arena for men. This is revealed especially in denominations like ‘riksdagsman’, ‘ämbetsman’, tjänsteman’, ‘förtroendeman’, ‘ombudsman’, ‘talman’, etc. Since long, the men were those who possessed political power and power over politics.

The men were those controlling and representing the state, and it was they who at once defined and formulated the rules of the political game, i.e. the Parliamentary Act, which, in turn, stipulated who was entitled to vote, to be elected, or to practise in the field of public politics. In brief, men created, through the Parliamentary Act, the political demarcations which defined whose opinions and bodies were to be represented. The Constitution demonstrated that men and politics were regarded as a plausible and appropriate combination, in contrast to a corresponding combination of women and politics. Up to the 1920s, one can therefore look on the state both as an arena with a hundred-per-cent predominance of men and as a collective male actor.

Hjalmar Öhrvall: “… a question of justice, not a party political one ”.

Neither as a group or as individuals had women, in contrast to men, the formal rights or any institutional possibility to influence the state and its exercise of authority, as they lacked franchise as well as eligibility. Nor could they become officials employed in the service of the state (‘ämbetsmän’). Since women had this, considerably weak, relation to the state, lacking the institutional tool needed to affect the state and the content of public politics, the gender relationship between men and women was indeed unequal. Compared to men, women were therefore forced to act differently in the political field.

Women nevertheless had some indirect possibilities to influence the Parliament, i.e. the state, by associating themselves with some of its members. Highly ranked politicians were also the members of Männens förening för kvinnans politiska rösträtt, MFKPR (‘The Men’s Association for Women’s Political Franchise’), which included a membership also in LKPR. This was how LKPR came to have its “own” spokesmen in the Parliament. Acting on the municipal political level and entering party political organisations, women were able to exert an inside as well as outside influence on men’s political initiatives. Despite the fact that women had not formally obtained their political citizenship, some of them acted within the public sphere – also in the narrow sense of this term.

The goal is achieved - women on their way to vote!

Three relationships were changed as soon as women acquired their political rights in 1921. Women got a direct link to the state (1). This meant that the state no longer was devoted to men, that the state’s self-assumed male system was disturbed, and that the relationship between the state and the men was altered (2). By incorporating women into spheres of political decision-making, i.e. the Parliament, the county councils, municipalities and political parties, men’s conditions were all at once changed, in the loss of monopoly over politics and the state. This turned the relationship between men and women less unequal (3), even though this was no more than a step on the path leading to equal citizenhship.

Notes:

1. In Britain and the United States, women began organising their struggle for franchise in the 1860s. In Ireland, the struggle for franchise started in the 1870s. Also in Norway and Finland women organised themselves for the achievement of suffrage earlier than in Sweden. The international movement for franchise IWSA (International Woman Suffrage Alliance) was established in 1904.
2. British and American suffragettes using militant methods, for instance by refusing paying their taxes or destroying public buildings, were exceptions that prove the rule. In these countries, there was an overall use of more spectacular means in the moulding of public opinion, including processions of demonstrators, street meetings, public outdoor meetings, cars and coaches. See also Suffrage and Beyond: International Feminist Perspectives, 1994, in which the problem in using the Anglo-Saxon struggle for franchise as a model for comparison is demonstrated.
3. Organisations for suffrage in other countries chose other strategies. In Britain, the radical and militant movement Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) chose to oppose each government, irrespective of party composition, which did not work for suffrage, in contrast to National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), which became a mass movement with a formal relationship to the Labour party. National Woman’s Party in U.S.A. and Irish Women’s Suffrage Society Belfast acted in ways that were similar to those of WSPU. Leading franchise women of the National American Suffrage Association (NAWSA) were not permitted as members in a political party until 1912.

Luleå, November 2005