Title: At a Snail's Pace: From Female Suffrage to a Policy of Equality in Germany *
Abstract: 1. INTRODUCTION: THE STRUGGLE FOR FEMALE S UFFRAGE Equal rights were a central demand of the women’s movements which emerged in the nineteenth century in the USA and Europe, including the movement in Germany which shall serve as an example in what follows. The early demands for equal rights were concentrated on property, education and, above all, women’s right to vote. It took a decade of incessant struggle. Apart from anything else, women with different origins and political ideas also had different interests. This was the case in almost every country. Some organisations represented female workers and servants, while others represented women from the higher social strata, who were interested mainly in maintaining their privileges. Many women from the middle classes accepted their exclusion from politics as the supposedly necessary corollary of woman’s so-called »natural destiny«, arising from her place in the household of a man (husband). That was the definition and point of view of the developing bourgeois class. The situation of women in the proletariat, which was growing in the nineteenth century, was different again, and the gulf between the bourgeois and proletarian women’s movements was profound.
Publication Year: 2011
Publication Date: 2011-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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