Legal right of women to wrote in Austria
Women's suffrage
was introduced in
Austria
on 12 November 1918 with the foundation of the Republic of Austria after the fall of the
Habsburg monarchy
with the end of
World War I
. While men had gained the right to vote in the years of 1861 until 1907, women were explicitly excluded from political participation since the
February Patent
in 1861.
[1]
[2]
Only unmarried landholding women were allowed to vote,
before
1907.
Suffrage movements
[
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]
Women's organisations that existed since the
German revolutions of 1848?1849
were focusing on improving educational and career opportunities as well as labour rights. Only at the end of the 19th century, women started to demand women's suffrage.
[1]
The suffrage movement in Austria didn't unite at first because of differing approaches between different groups. The two main groups were the Social Democrats and the bourgeois-radical
Allgemeiner Osterreichischer Frauenverein
, founded in 1893 by
Auguste Fickert
. Both had close alliances with their respective parties. The
Social Democratic Party of Austria
was the first political party to demand universal suffrage for men and women, although introducing men's suffrage was more important for the party and women's suffrage was often left out of negotiations as a compromise.
Adelheid Popp
was a leading figure in the Social Democratic women's movement and on 1 October 1893 she organised a protest for women's suffrage in Vienna.
[1]
In 1902,
Marianne Hainisch
founded the
Bund Osterreichischer Frauenvereine
in order to create an umbrella organisation for the Austrian women's organisations and in order to be better able to network also internationally. More than the Social Democrats and the Allgemeiner Osterreichsicher Frauenverein, both of which were careful in their demands or were focusing more on other topics, Bund Osterreichischer Frauenvereine was very vocal in demanding women's suffrage. While the law of associations from 1867 prohibited the foundation of an explicitly political association,
Ernestine Furth
in 1905 initiated a committee for women's suffrage within the structures of Bund Osterreichischer Frauenvereine. An appeal to turn this committee into an own association was rejected in 1907.
[1]
[3]
[4]
In the 1910s, activism for women's suffrage increased. The women's suffrage committee within Bund Osterreichischer Frauenvereine from 1911 on published the magazine
Zeitschrift fur Frauen-Stimmrecht
around women's suffrage and the committee was founded in several cities across Austria. Inspired by a speech by German socialist
Clara Zetkin
about introducing an
International Women's Day
, Adelheid Popp and other Social Democrats organised a demonstration for women's suffrage in Vienna on 19 March 1911. According to
Arbeiter-Zeitung
, around 20.000 women and also men participated in the demonstration. Signs like "Heraus das Frauenwahlrecht" or "Hoch das Frauenwahlrecht" were shown at the demonstration. The demonstration happened annually, even during World War I.
[3]
Introduction of women's suffrage
[
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Still during the war, in a parliamentary assembly on 30 May 1917, Social Democrat
Karl Seitz
demanded to treat women as equal citizens. In October 1918, bourgeois and Social Democratic women's organisations wrote a common petition to the national assembly.
[4]
On 12 November 1918, the day that the Republic was announced, the law of state and government reform was introduced. Article 9 of the reform mentioned that suffrage for the election of the
Austrian Parliament
should be universal and without making a difference between genders. Social Democrat
Karl Renner
drafted the law and he later recalled that he tried to frame women's suffrage as obvious and not to place too much attention on the topic.
[5]
The
Constituent National Assembly
in February 1919 was the first time that women could participate in national elections in Austria.
Anna Boschek
,
Emmy Freundlich
,
Adelheid Popp
,
Gabriele Proft
,
Therese Schlesinger
,
Amalie Seidel
and
Maria Tusch
(all Social Democrats) as well as
Hildegard Burjan
(Christian Social Party) were the first women to be elected into parliament.
[6]
All Social Democrats were in favour of introducing the law, the
Christian Social Party
and the German National Party were originally against it, but the Christian Social Party was eventually convinced to introduce it. They wanted to only introduce women's suffrage if the law included
compulsory voting
as they were afraid that their female voter base could be less easily convinced to participate in elections than women voting for the Social Democrats. Compulsory voting in the end could be introduced by the Federal States of Austria, which took place in
Tyrol
and
Vorarlberg
.
[5]
[6]
Until 1930, women and men voted with envelopes in different colors, which made it possible to analyse political preferences according to gender. This was important for the established political parties, as they didn't know how the introduction of women's suffrage would affect the political landscape.
[5]
[6]
Sex workers
were excluded from voting based on "moral" grounds and only in 1923, this was changed.
[5]
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