Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - V. Social Movements - 2. Woman Question. By Lydia Wahlström
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739
since 1862 women paying rates to the commune, vote on the same
conditions as men. Since number of votes depended on the amount of taxes
paid (see page 286), the women in general remained in the minority and
have therefore only slightly been able to make their influence felt.
Women have nevertheless acquired a real increase of influence from the
new communal regulations of 1910, which lowered the graded scale and
enfranchised married women on very much more favourable conditions
than men and unmarried women and made women eligible for election
to all communal bodies, except county councils. Formerly (since 1889.)
they only had a certain limited eligibility to School Boards and Boards
of Guardians. Now, in 1914, there are 73 women town-councillors in
Sweden.
Through their participation in communal elections the women of
Sweden also elect indirectly the members of the First Chamber of the
Riksdag, and, seeing that the town-councillors of the five largest cities are
electors to this chamber, women councillors there exercise a direct
political vote. By this means a natural starting point has been given to a
movement for Woman’s Suffrage, and the founding of this movement in
Sweden marks the opening up of a new era in the advancement of women’s
right. The purely liberal deinand that has principally been advocated
hitherto is that unmarried women of the middleclass should be admitted
to well-paid work and economic privileges, if they fulfill the requisite
qualifications; starting from that point, the women’s movement now
advances, in Sweden as in most other civilized countries, to include the
demand of political rights for all women. But at the same time emphasis
is laid on women’s responsibilities to the State, and on the State’s need for
the contributions of women towards the public weal, which has made
it possible for women of all shades of opinion to join the movement. The
first unions for the political suffrage of women were formed in 1902, a
national organization in 1903, and in 1904 this joined the International
Woman Suffrage Alliance, founded the same year in Berlin and
numbering 26 countries as members. The Swedish National Woman
Suffrage Union now numbers 213 local associations, of which 24 are
offshoots, with 17 000 members; and these again are to be included
with the Social Democratic Women, Fredrika-Bremer Society and
The White Ribbon, a temperance association; an approximate total
of all Swedish women organized for obtaining the political franchise
is 35 000. Repeated motions on the question have been brought
forward, both from the conservative and the radical sides, since 1902;
and in 1906 the Riksdag requested the Government for a statistical and
historical statement in full: the last part of this was laid upon the table
in 1912. The question formed a plank in the social-democrat platform in
1906, and in that of the liberals in 1907. On the opposition of the
First chamber, a parliamentary bill fell through in 1909 and 1914, as did
a government bill in 1912, for the franchise and eligibility of women on
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