The achievement of female suffrage in Europe: on women’s citizenship

I•CON (2014), Vol. 12 No. 1, 4–34 doi:10.1093/icon/mot067 © The Author 2014. Oxford University Press and New York University School of Law. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected] The achievement of female suffrage in Europe: on women’s citizenship RuthRubio-Marín* This article lays out the theoretical framing underlying the gendered construction of citizenship in Western political thought during the transition to modernity; describes the relevant actors in the fight for female suffrage and the impact that the separate spheres of ideology had on both the narratives supporting and resisting female suffrage, and on the selective and piecemeal way in which suffrage was eventually won by women in European countries. Furthermore, it identifies the main factors accounting for women’s earlier or later achievement of suffrage in different European nations and, exploring the connection between women’s access to voting rights and to civil and social rights, it retells a story of women’s citizenship which is an inverted image of that developed by T.H. Marshall on the basis of the male paradigm. It finally brings us to the present to discuss the persistent political under-representation of women in Europe, as well as a growing awareness about the need to ensure women’s full citizenship through measures that seek the incorporation of women in male spheres of power and the disestablishment of the sexual contract, something which the historical conquest of suffrage could not achieve by itself. 1. Introduction Some fifteen years ago, political theorist Carole Pateman deplored the fact that we still knew remarkably little about how women had won the vote in different parts of the world.1 This gap in knowledge regarding women’s constitutional history included Europe, where, with the exception of just a handful of countries, such as France or the UK, little comparative research had been done on this question with obvious implications for women’s status as citizens in constitutional democracies. This article summarizes the lessons from a recent book describing how women accessed suffrage and * Professor of Constitutional and Public Comparative Law, European University Institute. Email: Ruth. R[email protected]. 1 Carole Pateman, Three Questions about Womanhood Suffrage, in Suffrage and Beyond: InternatIonal femInISt PerSPectIveS 331 (Caroline Daley & Melanie Nolan eds., 1994). Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/icon/article-abstract/12/1/4/628588 by UNIVERSIDAD DE SEVILLA user on 08 June 2018 The achievement of female suffrage in Europe 5 came to inhabit the notion of citizenship in different European countries.2 Acomparative look at the history of women’s right to vote across Europe helps us to understand what was at stake for women in the transition to modernity, and how modernity conceptualized women’s citizenship. It helps to give us a notion of how important wom- en’s vote was for women and other actors, what factors stood in the way of women’s suffrage, and what other considerations and events made it possible in different countries at different points of time in history. It also allows us to retell the history of citizenship, as a rights-holding status, from a woman’s perspective, and to place women’s persistent under-representation in traditionally male domains of power in a historical context. This reminiscence of the history and unfolding of the concept of women’s citizenship comes at a time when Europe’s gender equality model is gradually departing from a narrowly conceived equal rights/opportunities framework in order to embrace a new democratic framework,3 which actively seeks the disestablishment of the sep arate spheres tradition that was entrenched, rather than challenged, with the consolidation of modern states in Europe.4 In doing so, Europe has been advancing towards wom- en’s full citizenship, a task only initiated when women were politically enfranchised, but has as of yet not been fully completed. This article starts by laying out the theoretical framing underlying the gendered construction of citizenship in Western political thought during the transition to modernity (Section 2). Section 3 describes the relevant actors in the fight, including the Church and political parties, explaining their often paradoxical behavior as a result of collisions between principle and strategy. The specific contribution of, and challenges faced by, women’s activism in general, and suffragism in particular, are described under Section 4.Section 5 discusses the impact that the separate spheres ideology had on both the narratives supporting and resisting female suffrage, and on the selective and piecemeal way in which suffrage was eventually won by women in European countries. Section 6 identifies the main factors and the synergies between them, accounting for women’s earlier or later achievement of suffrage in different European nations. Section 7 explores the connection between women’s access to voting rights and to civil and social rights, retelling a story of women’s citizenship which is an inverted image of that developed by T.H. Marshall on the basis of the male paradigm. Section 8 concludes by bringing us to the present to discuss the persistent political under-representation of women in Europe, as well as a growing awareness about the need to ensure women’s full citizenship through measures that seek the incorporation of women in male spheres of power and the disestablishment of the sexual contract, something which the historical conquest of suffrage could not achieve by itself. 2 See the Struggle for female Suffrage In euroPe: votIng to Become cItIzenS (Blanca Rodríguez-Ruiz & Ruth Rubio-Marín eds., 2012). 3 Ruth Rubio-Marín, A New European Parity-Democracy Sex Equality Model and Why it Won’t Fly in the US, 60(1) am. J.comP. l. 99 (2012). 4 Blanca Rodríguez Ruiz & Ruth Rubio-Marín, The gender of representation: On democracy, equality and parity, 6(2) Int’l J.conSt. l. 287 (2008). Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/icon/article-abstract/12/1/4/628588 by UNIVERSIDAD DE SEVILLA user on 08 June 2018 6I•CON 12 (2014), 4–34 2. The theoretical framing: transition to modernity and female citizenship Women’s access to suffrage responded to the dynamics at play in the creation of modern states and the definition of male and female citizenship in the republican and liberal traditions of citizenship. In both these traditions, the new modern subject was from the start a gendered subject: namely, one shaped by symbolically male features, and represented as abstract, disembodied, rational, impartial, and independent. While the liberal tradition ignored sex-specific particularity, the republican one transcended it.5 Starting with the latter, with its roots in Aristotle and Machiavelli, the republican tradition conceived of citizens as economically independent, and therefore as having enough resources and time to devote themselves to the business of governing the city, and as politically autonomous in being able to form their own judgment about the common good without depending on superiors.6 It also prioritized citizen soldiers who, unlike mercenaries, were willing to defend the polity because they had a stake in it. Both arguments were combined in justifying the exclusion of women, an exclusion which the French Revolution reproduced. If men expressed their contribution to the common good, and thus their citizenship through their military duties, the republican model for women, and thus the container of their “citizenship persona,” their sex-specific and nature-dictated form of patriotism, was motherhood. In their role as mothers, women were seen as reproductive vessels instilling love for republican virtues, and acting as guardians of virtues and morals.7 All of this was to take place in the private sphere, a sphere conceptualized as both separate and subordinate to the male-inhabited and male-defined public sphere. Thus, while during the French Revolution women were at first allowed to participate in public debates and meetings,8 already in 1793, women’s clubs were being prohibited. It was not through their direct political participation that women were expected to contribute to the res publica. In fact, French women only got the right to vote as late as1944. Nor were women regarded as equal citizens in the liberal tradition. Liberalism was grounded in an axiological framework that aspired to be universal and transcend particularism. Calling on an undifferentiated human nature and conceiving of individuals as naturally free, it developed a language of freedom and rights. Yet, in the bourgeois society, where the liberal discourse developed, the only subjects and rights-holders were those endowed with property (including of the self), those who could sustain themselves,9 and those who were more generally subjected to no one. 5 ruth lISter, fIona WIllIamS, annelI antonen, etal., cItIzenShIP: femInISt PerSPectIveS 71 (2d ed. 2003). 6 This of course was the reasoning used to justify the exclusion not only of women, but also of the poor, the non-tax-payers, the non-land-owners, and, in general, the working classes. 7 lISter, supra note5. 8 Joan B.Landes, The Performance of Citizenship: Democracy, Gender and Difference in the French Revolution, in democracy and dIfference: conteStIng the BoundarIeS of the PolItIcal 305 (Seyla Benhabib ed., 1996). 9 ruth lISter, fIona WIllIamS, annelI antonen, etal., genderIng cItIzenShIP In WeStern euroPe: neW challengeS for cItIzenShIP In a croSS-natIonal context 21 (2007). Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/icon/article-abstract/12/1/4/628588 by UNIVERSIDAD DE SEVILLA user on 08 June 2018 The achievement of female suffrage in Europe 7 Just like republicanism, liberalism constructed the myth of the independence and selfsufficiency of the political being. To do this, liberalism shaped the individual as selfpossessed. Self-ownership (the requirement that citizens own property in their own persons) was recognized as the basis for political subjects, and constituted the move by which women, as creatures of feeling and not reason, were excluded from the polity.10 Women remained excluded even when, with the advances of industrialization and the workers’ class struggle, the “property/liberty” connection to citizenship was expanded to include not only ownership, but also capacity of producing property through wage labor, and the economic domain—as opposed to just the political domain—became increasingly perceived as a “public” domain.11 Women were primarily defined simply as property in the private, and this precluded their capacity to benefit from ownership in the public.12 In other words, liberalism constructed a self-possessed individual as male, displacing the manifestations of men’s dependency linked to social reproduction onto women. This resulted in modernity sealing a sexual contract,13 a contract of fraternity, whereby men assigned women the role of sexual and reproductive labor, articulating a division of spheres and gender roles. Women, especially married women, often appeared as the flip-side of autonomy, and were therefore excluded from the holding and/or managing of property, all or some forms of paid employment and professions, as well as political participation. Even in Britain, the country with the oldest form of parliamentary representation, women did not get full voting rights before 1928, and this only after long and convoluted struggles.14 The separation of spheres and the relegation of women to that of domesticity, as both a distinctly female sphere, but also a subordinate domain, was thereby at the foundation of modern democracies. While in French law, the obedience and subordination of the wife under her master’s command was conceptualized as a repub lican virtue, legitimized by the superior interest of the public good, in English common law, the regime of community of the spouses, the so-called common-law doctrine of 10 See Elizabeth Mayes, Private Property, the Private Subject and Women, in femInISm confrontS homo economIcuS. gender, laW and SocIety 119 (Martha Albertson Fineman & Terence Dougherty eds., 2005). 11 See nItza BerkovItch, from motherhood to cItIzenShIP: Women’S rIghtS and InternatIonal organIzatIonS 13 (1999). 12 See Mayes, supra note 10, at 125. The private-property-holder paradigm was male too, relying on the model of an “owner-actor whose economic power derives from freedom of mobility, autonomy from relational limitations and a singular construction of responsibility.” 13 Id. 14 The sexual contract was also at the foundation of the American Revolution. Despite the proclamation of the universalistic, democratic, and liberal rights on which it was based, it was also led by British-descended, North-American, male colonists, most of whom “led patriarchal families structured in accordance with English common law, with wives performing the duties assigned them by their ruling husbands.” See Rogers M.Smith, The Distinctive Barriers to Gender Equality, in haS lIBeralISm faIled Women? aSSurIng equal rePreSentatIon In euroPe and the unIted StateS 185, 186–187 (Jytte Klausen & Charles S.Maier eds., 2001). Indeed, women gained suffrage only with the passage of the XIXth Amendment to the US Constitution in 1920, and democratic theorists in America such as Alexis de Tocqueville were just as influenced by the separate spheres tradition as their European counterparts. See John Markoff, Margins, Centers, and Democracy: The Paradigmatic History of Women’s Suffrage, 29(1) SIgnS: J.Women In culture & Soc’y 90 (2003). Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/icon/article-abstract/12/1/4/628588 by UNIVERSIDAD DE SEVILLA user on 08 June 2018 8I•CON 12 (2014), 4–34 coverture, meant that the woman lived under the “cover” of her husband, who—as the head of household—enjoyed the status of civil citizenship. The legal subordination of married women was more than a simple matter of exclusion: it helped to “define civil citizenship, for it was by protecting, subsuming and even owning others that white male property owners and family heads became citizens.”15 In the end, then, the republican as well as the liberal model converged in the basic differentiation between the public and the private sphere, relegating women to the latter. Indeed, most of the theoreticians of the bourgeois society (including Hegel, Kant, and Rousseau) insisted on the special role of women within the family, where a principle of dominance and hierarchy vis-à-vis married women went unchallenged in both the liberal property-ownership and the republican soldier/motherhood models. The principle of domination was secured by requiring the wife’s obedience and subordination to the husband’s “right of command” and by her economic dependence, anchored in the husband’s rights to administer her property and the earnings from her work.16 Domination and a gender-specific division of labor were jointly and foundationally established, and the tensions with the modern concept of citizenship, grounded on the principles of freedom and equality of all men, which signaled a radical break from traditional ideas of society as composed of natural hierarchies and inequalities, were simply waived away as being natural. In view of this, it is hardly surprising that in many European countries the modern legal order in fact came to deprive women of the suffrage rights they had enjoyed under the political institutions of the “Ancient Regime,” linked to feudal notions of status or to the ownership of property. Where they existed, as in Sweden,17 the Netherlands,18 and some pre-unitary Italian states (including the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, Lombardy, and the Venetian Region),19 these rights were indeed the exception. They were granted to (some) noblewomen and to taxpaying women in some lands for some elections (often municipal or provincial), and were often indirect. However, far from expanding women’s voting rights along with men’s, both modern electoral laws and the new constitutions of the time came to deprive women of (or further restrict) their previous limited voting rights. Sometimes this was done by rendering explicit the idea that the gender-neutral formulation of the concept of “citizenship” meant in fact only men. This was notably the case with the electoral laws of 1848 in Hungary,20 1907 in the Austrian half of the Habsburg 15 Nancy Fraser & Linda Gordon, Civil Citizenship Against Social Citizenship, in the condItIon of cItIzenShIP 90, 88 (Bart van Steenbergen ed., 1994). 16 lISter etal., supra note 9, at 35. 17 Lena Wängnerud, How Women Gained Suffrage in Sweden: AWeave of Alliances, in the Struggle for female Suffrage In euroPe, supra note 2, 241, at 242. 18 Inge Bleijenbergh & Jet Bussemaker, The Women’s Vote in the Netherlands, in the Struggle for female Suffrage In euroPe, supra note 2, 175, at 177. 19 Susanna Mancini, From the Struggle for Suffrage to the Construction of a Fragile Gender Citizenship: Italy 1861–2009, in the Struggle for female Suffrage In euroPe, supra note 2, 373, at 375. 20 Csilla Kollonay-Lehoczky, Development Defined by Paradoxes: Hungarian History and Female Suffrage, in the Struggle for female Suffrage In euroPe, supra note 2, 421, at 421. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/icon/article-abstract/12/1/4/628588 by UNIVERSIDAD DE SEVILLA user on 08 June 2018 The achievement of female suffrage in Europe 9 Empire,21 1865 in Italy,22 1866 in Sweden,23 and 1887 in the Netherlands,24 all of which explicitly excluded women from the vote altogether. 3. Political actors in the struggle: between strategy and principle The allocation of men and women to separate spheres was both a reality and a selfreinforcing ideological construct. They often converged in the creation of synergies accounting for the disassociation of men’s and women’s franchise and the impossibility of a single democratization agenda. Women often indeed lacked economic independence, education, paid employment, and professional opportunities similar to those of men at the time of the fight for universal suffrage. Women’s relegation to the sphere of domesticity, where they were expected to reproduce and to nourish the mores and the traditional culture, allowed making predictions about the conservative, traditional, and religiously affected political behavior that women would have, had they been allowed to vote. To those most concerned with advancing the new modern order, these predictions often advised postponing female suffrage on strategic grounds in order to concentrate on what were perceived as the truly serious remnants of a “pre-modern” or “illegitimate” political order to be overcome, such as the lack of re cognition of universal male suffrage or the limitation of non-democratically legitimized sources of authority, including that of the Monarchy or the Church; or that of imperial or colonial powers. Those in favor of female suffrage, often including conservative and religious parties, for the most part shared these predictions about women’s nature and inclinations, and thus saw in the female electorate the possibility to preserve a threatened order from the excesses of modernity. The prevalence of strategic reasoning, and the low profile of the enlightenment ideas of freedom, justice, and equality, in the discussion of female suffrage, are indeed noteworthy. Granted, some progressive political parties in several countries—including socialist, liberal, or republican parties—embraced the new enlightened language, and saw in the new modern state a true promise of rights and democracy for all, including women. Such principled language certainly bore some weight in some concrete cases, as in the debates about female suffrage held in the Spanish Constituent Assembly in 1931.25 However, the European debate around female suffrage was overall widely dominated by strategy. Strategy prevailed in positions in favor of and against female suffrage and understandings about women’s nature and likely behavior, as well as the prioritization of other political causes, had a clear impact on when female suffrage was recognized, and whose actions ended up being mainly responsible forit. 21 Birgitta Bader-Zaar, Gaining the Vote in a World in Transition: Female Suffrage in Austria, in the Struggle for female Suffrage In euroPe, supra note 2, 191, at 192–203, 196. 22 Mancini, supra note 19, at 375. 23 Wängnerud, supra note 17, at 242–243. 24 Bleijenbergh & Bussemaker, supra note 18, at 177. 25 Ana Aguado, Constructing Women’s Citizenship: The Conquest of Suffrage and Women’s Political Rights in Spain, in the Struggle for female Suffrage In euroPe, supra note 2, 289, at 293–295. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/icon/article-abstract/12/1/4/628588 by UNIVERSIDAD DE SEVILLA user on 08 June 2018 10 I•CON 12 (2014), 4–34 The creation of mass parties at the end of the nineteenth century had turned women into attractive potential campaigners, and possibly even voters. Some political parties felt the urge to recruit women by appealing to causes dear to them. Sometimes this translated into support for female suffrage, yet most often it did not, and women remained mostly instrumental in achieving political parties’ further aims. In several countries in particular, the fight for women’s equal rights was regarded as a threat to workers’ rights and livelihoods. Indeed, many socialist parties and other left-wing or progressive forces held an ambivalent position towards female suffrage. This means that they were willing to compromise equality-based commitments they embraced in theory, arguing at least for the postponement of female suffrage until male universal suffrage was achieved. Expanding the vote to women on the same conditions as men (which at the time often meant enfranchising only women of property or those who paid taxes) was seen as a direct threat to the socialist class struggle. Thus, although socialism in theory prided itself on supporting the cause of women’s emancipation, the issue was considered secondary, or even subversive, with feminists’ efforts by definition being suspected of bourgeois tendencies. The First International (1864–1867) was hostile toward wage labor for women and unenthusiastic about allowing women into politics. The Second International had a more positive attitude about the women’s cause, but it adopted the official policy that prohibited cooperation with bourgeois groups.26 Socialist women were simply expected to focus their energies on the socialist movement and not on women’s rights.27 In 1875, for instance, women’s alleged reactionary political tendencies constituted the most important argument against including women’s suffrage in the founding documents of the German Social Democratic Party.28 Privileging class struggle was not the only relevant consideration, however. Nationalist struggles, and fights to limit the power of the Church and the monarchy, were often as important in explaining support or resistance to the franchise of women from political parties. In Luxemburg, to mention a case, liberals opposed female suffrage because they thought it would threaten their aspirations to limit the sovereign power of the Crown and the influence of the Catholic Church.29 Similarly, in Italy, although “communists after World War II perceived women as crucial in the construction of consent within the newborn democracy,” they were still only half-heart- edly committed to the cause, fearing the “Vatican’s influence on women’s vote.”30 26 Even among feminist socialists, clear commitment to suffrage for all men and women—as opposed to a strategy of male universal suffrage first—was only expressed in the First International Conference of Socialist Women held in 1907 in conjunction with the International Socialist Congress. Only after that did women delegates commit to mobilize the whole International for the cause. See BerkovItch, supra note 11, at 32–33. 27 lee ann BanaSzak, Why movementS Succeed or faIl: oPPortunIty, culture and the Struggle for Woman Suffrage 203 (1996). 28 Ellen Carol DuBois, Woman Suffrage around the World: Three Phases of Suffragist Internationalism, in Suffrage and Beyond, supra note 1, 252, at 253. 29 Sonja Kmec, Female Suffrage in Luxembourg, in the Struggle for female Suffrage In euroPe, supra note 2, 159, at 165. 30 Mancini, supra note 19, at 383–384. In fact, communist militants would later blame women’s “conservative vote” for the defeat of their party in the political elections of 1946 and 1948 (id. at 384). Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/icon/article-abstract/12/1/4/628588 by UNIVERSIDAD DE SEVILLA user on 08 June 2018 The achievement of female suffrage in Europe 11 In France too, “women’s right to vote was thus bound up with political struggles between religious and anticlerical movements, the former invoking tradition and often the monarchy, the latter supporting progress and the Republic,”31 something which explains why the Radical Party especially, but also the Socialist, and Communist Party, resisted female suffrage. Although, for the most part, women were expected to be, and indeed were, involved in struggles for autonomy against imperial or colonial powers, whenever female suffrage was thought to delay the country’s journey towards independence, it was also resisted on such grounds. This was, for instance, the case in Poland and Ireland: in the latter, the home rule debate, with its religious overtones, ensured tensions between gender equality and nationalist aspirations at the end of the nineteenth century and in the early twentieth century.32 The easy predisposition of political parties to sacrifice justice for women and women’s aspirations for the sake of other “more important, urgent or compelling” causes meant that the achievement of female suffrage was many times the result of a joint effort between strange political bed-fellows. Acombination of left-wing forces (defending female suffrage on principled grounds) and right-wing forces (doing the same on strategic grounds) was indeed not an uncommon formula. In Belgium, Catholics offered their support for universal male franchise, a Socialist claim, in return for Socialist support for local female franchise and, in the end, it was the Catholics and the Communists who submitted a bill granting women national suffrage to parliament in 1945.33 In Luxembourg, female suffrage was achieved as a result of an alliance between the socialists supporting the cause on principle, and conservatives acting strategically in the belief that women would support Christian values, fight alcoholism, and support the Monarchy, all against the opposition of liberals (who feared women’s conservative vote).34 Thus, ironically, in many European countries, Catholic and/or other conservative forces ended up supporting female suffrage in the belief that women would vote conservative, restrain the excesses of liberalism and the proletarian and revolutionary struggle, including communism and secularism, and uphold traditional family values. As a result of this, some countries experienced the emergence of a very conservative “Christian feminism.” This was the case in both France35 and Italy,36 especially after Pope Benedict XV’s declaration in favor of wom- en’s enfranchisement in 1919. 31 Sylvie Chaperon, The Difficult Struggle for Women’s Political Rights in France, in the Struggle for female Suffrage In euroPe, supra note 2, 305, at 314. 32 The situation in Poland can be found in Małgorzata Fuszara, Polish Women’s Fight for Suffrage, in the Struggle for female Suffrage In euroPe, supra note 2, 143, at 146; and Ireland in Myrtle Hill, Divisions and Debates: The Irish Suffrage Experience, in the Struggle for female Suffrage In euroPe, supra note 2, 257, at 261. 33 Petra Meier, Caught Between Strategic Positions and Principles of Equality: Female Suffrage in Belgium, in the Struggle for female Suffrage In euroPe, supra note 2, 407, at 412. 34 See Kmec, supra note 29, at 166–168. 35 See Chaperon, supra note 31, at 313–314. 36 See Mancini, supra note 19, at 379. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/icon/article-abstract/12/1/4/628588 by UNIVERSIDAD DE SEVILLA user on 08 June 2018 12 I•CON 12 (2014), 4–34 4. Women’s fight for female suffrage: suffragism and the challenge of speaking with a singlevoice The sacrifice of women’s full political rights for the sake of other political priorities meant that, to a large extent, women in the fight for female suffrage were unable to rely on the political-party structure system. At the same time, women’s associations, which started to flourish in many parts of Europe around the mid-1850s, mostly led by educated, politically connected, and bourgeois women, often prioritized causes other than suffrage, including access to education, employment, and professional development. In fact, sharing many of the assumptions about the likeliness of wom- en’s regressive political behavior (at least until they became more politically educated, and had the means to ensure financial independence from their husbands and moral independence from the Church), many enlightened feminists too feared that female suffrage could hold back the reforms brought by liberalism and modernity. Partly as a reaction to the inaction of all other relevant actors, including political parties, and partly expressing dissatisfaction with the limited agenda of women’s bourgeois associations, suffragist organizations proliferated at the turn of the century forming a suffragist movement with international ambitions. The institutional features and tactics of suffragist organizations varied. Although most were independent organizations, many—including those which were often most successful—had party connections, and some were even created as a branch of a political party. While most pursued suffrage through the means accorded by the political system, some—notably the suffragettes in the UK—were more radical in their methods. They defended different forms of civil disobedience when necessary, and, like the members of the Women’s Social and Political Union in Britain, engaged in very unconventional activities, which included arson and hunger strikes in prison, as expressions of what Mrs. Pankhurst called a “civil war” waged by women.37 Nearly all of the organizations were in contact with, and were influenced by, the suffrage movements in other countries and international organizations. Indeed, the cause of female suffrage provided the first occasion for international mobilization in the fight for women’s rights. The fight was spearheaded by the women’s temperance movement, which, initially rooted in the US, had also gained an international dimension.38 The emergence of a newly militant suffragism was influenced by the upsurge of socialist politics at the end of the nineteenth century, but was ideologically and organizationally independent from it. This form of suffragism had its roots in England, but its branches reached out over much of the rest of the world, with the International Woman Suffrage Association being established between 1899 and 1902. Initially viewed as a 37 See Emmeline Pankhurst, When Civil War is Waged by Women, in femInISm: the eSSentIal hIStorIcal WrItIngS 296 (Miriam Schneir ed., 1972). 38 The Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was formed in the United States in 1874 as a conventional Protestant women’s organization with a narrow moral reform focus; it went on to become a more ambitious and politically articulated organization. In 1884, it led to the formation of the World’s Women’s Christian Temperance Union, which had great impact in Australia and New Zealand’s early winning of suffrage. See Dubois, supra note 28, at 256. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/icon/article-abstract/12/1/4/628588 by UNIVERSIDAD DE SEVILLA user on 08 June 2018 The achievement of female suffrage in Europe 19 6.1. Contributing factors: unsettling common understandings, adding complexity With a few dramatic exceptions, notably the cases of England and the United States, the achievement of suffrage at the turn of the century has often been linked to governments granting the vote to women in a calculated, top-down, and self-interested manner. Similarly, it has been a common understanding that women’s enfranchisement was “on the whole a conservative endeavor, both as regards the forces responsible for achieving votes for women and the impact that women’s votes had on political life.”73 However, a careful look at the histories behind the achievement of female suffrage in most European countries shows these to be overbroad generalizations. We have mentioned how, in some countries, conservative forces—sometimes including the Church and confessional parties—were indeed crucial for the granting of women’s suffrage before World War II. Yet, the stories are more complex than that for it was often the alliance between conservative and progressive or left-wing forces that triggered the change. In Italy and Belgium, for example, we actually find communists aligning themselves with conservative parties to overcome the ambivalence or passive resistance of other parties, including the socialists and the liberals in support of female suffrage.74 And stories abound about liberal and socialist parties, and key figures within them, which played key roles in supporting women’s suffrage, often in alliance with women’s groups and suffragists. Describing women’s access to suffrage as a top-down process also fails to reflect the importance of women’s suffrage movements, and their internationally organized contribution to fighting women’s marginalization in the politics of each nation. In fact, women’s determined efforts through the organized labor of feminist movements demanding the vote for women is one of the factors explaining why in some countries women were enfranchised before, or at the end of the war, whereas in others they had to wait longer.75 Indeed, between 1890 and 1930, it was the number of national women’s political organizations demanding the extension of women’s suffrage in a certain country which mostly determined the likelihood of women gaining suffrage.76 73 But see Dubois, supra note 28, at 252, referring to rIchard evanS’s classic survey, the femInIStS (1978), arguing that this is unsubstantiated by empirical research. Regarding the US, see also Holly J.McCammon & Karen E.Campbell, Winning the Vote in the West: The Political Successes of the Women’s Suffrage Movements, 1866–1919, 15(1) gender & Soc’y 55 (2001), challenging the standard account which gives responsibility to a primarily native, white, male constituency that believed that female voters would bring Puritan norms of behavior into public life, supporting laws restricting saloons and other venues of gambling and prostitution. They argue that, instead, women’s access to suffrage came as a result of suffrage movements’ mobilization as well as contextual factors, including whether major political parties endorsed them and whether women were already moving into male domains, particularly in higher education and in the professions. 74 In Italy, before the end of World War II, Communists and Christian Democrats agreed on supporting the women’s vote (Mancini, supra note 19, at 381). In Belgium, after World War II, the Catholic and the Communist parties submitted a bill to parliament that would grant women suffrage in 1948. See Meier, supra note 33, at 412. 75 Pateman, supra note 1, at 342. 76 See Francisco O.Ramirez, Yasemin Soysal, and Suzanne Shanahan, The Changing Logic of Political Citizenship: Cross-National Acquisition of Women’s Suffrage Rights, 1890 to 1990, 62(5) am. Soc. rev. 739 (1997). Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/icon/article-abstract/12/1/4/628588 by UNIVERSIDAD DE SEVILLA user on 08 June 2018 20 I•CON 12 (2014), 4–34 Nevertheless, in some countries, the achievement of female suffrage was indeed a top-down process. Some have related this to the fact that from 1931 onwards, and especially after World War II, it was “international standards, world culture and isomorphism” that become most influential.77 With worldwide decolonization and the reorganization of international politics after World War II, as well as the rise of a truly international women’s movement, national independence became a major catalyst, universal franchise being associated with struggles for democracy and the birth of the nation-state.78 By the last quarter of the twentieth century at the very latest, female suffrage had simply become part of the definition of what a modern democracy was about. Those who fought to bring about a passage to democratization, demanding the enlargement of suffrage to include previously excluded racial categories, the end of the one party rule, or the conversion of old monarchies into parliamentary monarchies, almost never attempted an electoral system in which women and men would not be treated equally.79 For latecomers to women’s full and equal suffrage rights, such as Cyprus or Malta, female suffrage was indeed mostly the result of the implementation of more or less self-imposed international democratic standards representing modernization.80 Because sometimes women won the right to vote during, or immediately after, World War I, it has also been commonplace to grant the war itself a positive role in the achievement of female suffrage.81 In some countries, women were indeed rewarded for their active contribution to war effort. Additionally, in wartime and during postwar reconstruction, the close family household was often torn apart, with women being pushed into work and public services in a way that rendered the fiction of women’s relegation to the private sphere more difficult to sustain. This being said, focusing too strongly on the war as the main explanatory cause again undermines the work of generations of feminists. Besides, the correlation is far from clear-cut. After all, whereas some neutral countries, such as the Netherlands or Scandinavian countries, were among the first to grant women the franchise, some combatant countries, including France, Italy, and Belgium, only enfranchised women after World War II. In other countries, such as England, women’s war contributions played a role in granting women the vote, but, more than anything, the war seems to have “provided time and a supra-partisan environment for the political forces necessary to enfranchise women to mature.”82 Yet, in other countries, such as Germany and Austria, “defeat and revolution brought in socialist governments which enfranchised women,” and this has been 77 Id. 78 Id. 79 See Sylvia Walby, Is Citizenship Gendered?, 28(2) SocIology 379 (1994). 80 See Kalliope Agapiou-Josephides, Women’s Suffrage in Cyprus, in the Struggle for female Suffrage In euroPe, supra note 2, 453, at 453; and Ruth Farrugia, Female Suffrage in Malta, in the Struggle for female Suffrage In euroPe, supra note 2, 389, at 399–400. 81 See, e.g., leS garner, StePPIng StoneS to Women’S lIBerty: femInISt IdeaS In the Women’S Suffrage movement, 1900–1988, at ch. 7 (1984); Bryan S.turner, cItIzenShIP and caPItalISm: the deBate over reformISm 60 (1986). 82 turner, supra note 81, at 269. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/icon/article-abstract/12/1/4/628588 by UNIVERSIDAD DE SEVILLA user on 08 June 2018 The achievement of female suffrage in Europe 21 interpreted as an expression of the fact that a more direct causal role can be attributed to the war.83 While women’s participation in World War Imight have been a triggering factor in some countries, it is a country’s struggle for independence which appears to have been a more general galvanizing force. This of course was natural in the case of latecomers to independent statehood, such as Cyprus or Malta. But this held true more generally, and over time—not just after World War II, when such standards were most widely spread. One of the triggering factors of the early granting of suffrage to women in Finland was women’s successful participation in both the nationalist struggle against Russian oppression, and the fight on the language question to defend the affirmation of Finnish instead of Swedish.84 Similarly, in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, female suffrage was, in part, related to the women’s involvement in the nationalist struggle against the Russian empire.85 Arguably, women’s undeniable active contribution to such causes had to be acknowledged, representing a direct challenge to the notion that women were not apt to engage in politics. Furthermore, in some cases, the affirmation of a nationalist agenda weakened, delayed, or contaminated the political polarization around the class axis, an axis which in so many ways had the potential to overshadow the gender axis. Finally, in several countries, the causal link was not direct, but the timing made sense: since the nationalist struggle had divided the women’s movement internally and discouraged political parties to prioritize suffragist claims, the overcoming of such internal division when the national question was eventually resolved simply allowed women to present a common front and political parties to prioritize the cause of women’s empowerment.86 Other hypotheses have related the achievement of female suffrage to broader conceptions of (women’s) citizenship. Notably, in Scandinavian countries, there seems to be a tight connection between the early achievement of civil equality and political citizenship rights.87 Also, it has been said that the fact that several of the countries first to grant women suffrage were mostly agrarian societies, such as Finland, Sweden, and Denmark, shows that it was the lack of separation between the home, labor, and employment (typical of an agrarian society) which made the recognition of women as sources of production more evident, thereby making the construct of the separate spheres less appealing.88 83 Id. 84 See Korppi-Tommola, supra note 48, at 47–48. 85 See, respectively, Helen Biin & Anneli Alby, Suffrage and the Nation: Women’s Vote in Estonia, in the Struggle for female Suffrage In euroPe, supra note 2, 111, at 113; Aija Branta, Winning Women’s Vote: Experience from Latvia, in the Struggle for female Suffrage In euroPe, supra note 2, 95, at 95, 101–102; Toma Birmontienė & Virginija Jurėnienė, The Development of Women’s Rights in Lithuania: Striving for Political Equality, in the Struggle for female Suffrage In euroPe, supra note 2, 79, at 79. 86 The nationalist struggle played a crucial role in several European countries, including Ireland (see Hill, supra note 32, at 261–262, 264); Austria (see Bader-Zaar, supra note 21, at 193, 196–199), and the former Czechoslovakia (see Dana Musilová, Mothers of the Nation: Women’s Vote in the Czech Republic, in the Struggle for female Suffrage In euroPe, supra note 2, 207, at 209–210). 87 lISter etal., supra note 9, at 31. 88 Id. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/icon/article-abstract/12/1/4/628588 by UNIVERSIDAD DE SEVILLA user on 08 June 2018 22 I•CON 12 (2014), 4–34 Drawing from Macpherson, Pateman has argued that female suffrage was granted in so many countries by the end of the war because by then the meaning of the vote had undergone a radical change: franchise had been “tamed” both through “the development of the party system and of the welfare state blunting working-class pressure for reform.”89 In other words, women gained suffrage precisely when suffrage had lost much of its citizenship importance and transformative power in the face of the increasing recognition of social rights. Beyond the connection between social and political rights that Pateman refers to, in several European countries, female suffrage was indeed granted when suffrage mattered less altogether, including when it was relegated to a mainly symbolic role in the definition of citizenship and the state. The granting of suffrage to women under fascist and communist authoritarian regimes— that is, in regimes where elections were the façade of totalitarianism, if they took place at all—seems to be a case inpoint. Granting suffrage to women under Communism resonated well with the communist regimes’ criticism of private bourgeois family for enslaving women by reducing them to the status of male property. Communist regimes generally dismissed “the woman question” as a bourgeois anachronism, as a question which had to be integrated within the wider communist agenda of social reform. They therefore often banned and/or took over women’s organizations. Community sharing of housework and child care, women joining the production line, and their participation in community affairs through the right to vote and stand for office were promised, aligning orthodox Marxism and feminism.90 It is therefore not surprising that, as part of their rhetoric of social equality, Communist dictatorships preserved men’s and women’s suffrage rights where they existed, and even tried to ensure women’s representation through the use of quotas. In some countries, such as Bulgaria,91 Romania,92 and Slovenia,93 the Communist regime even introduced equal universal suffrage for the first time. Of course, political rights were in these cases just an empty formality, and both the men and women occupying political positions in such regimes were at most puppets of the Communistparty. Fascism saw the role of the woman differently. Fascist regimes in Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Spain, all rested on a very traditional view of women’s social role as wives and mothers, but they also tried to portray themselves as connected to the needs and distinct contributions of both men and women within the nation. In particular, women were involved in civil society through corporatist feminine organizations, where they were expected to contribute to upholding the moral standards. 89 See Pateman, supra note 1, at 342, citing craWford Brough macPherSon, the lIfe and tImeS of lIBeral democracy 64–9 (1977). 90 zollInger gIele, supra note 50, at 11–12. 91 See Krassimera Dasjkalova, Women’s Suffrage in Bulgaria, in the Struggle for female Suffrage In euroPe, supra note 2, 321, at 330. 92 Roxana Cheşchebec, The Achievement of Female Suffrage in Romania, in the Struggle for female Suffrage In euroPe, supra note 2, 357, at 368. 93 Irena Selišnik, Female Suffrage in Slovenia, in the Struggle for female Suffrage In euroPe, supra note 2, 339, at 339. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/icon/article-abstract/12/1/4/628588 by UNIVERSIDAD DE SEVILLA user on 08 June 2018 The achievement of female suffrage in Europe 23 The family and the home, however, remained their natural place so much so that wom- en’s employment was at times explicitly banned. The dictators in such regimes thus granted men and women some suffrage rights as part of their populist strategy, but in all cases this remained a moot gesture that, in a dictatorship, came at no political cost. 6.2. Synergies and paradigms Having distilled what seem to have been some of the main contributing factors, it is worth inquiring about possible sets of conditions signaling and typology of paths that either facilitated or delayed women’s suffrage. Among the countries that granted women suffrage before World War II, and often before or right after World War I, we can distinguish two groups. First, there are those that followed a “joint track.” Here, women’s suffrage was fought for, not as a separate cause, but rather as part of the struggle for universal suffrage, understood as including both men and women, in search of a modern notion of citizenship, sometimes, but not always, linked to a campaign for independent statehood. This joint track was followed in some of the first countries granting women full suffrage, including Finland (1906), Denmark (1915), Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania (1918), Poland (1918), the Netherlands (1919), Luxemburg (1919), and Ireland (1922).94 Political parties seem to have been the main protagonists. Since female suffrage was not pitted against male universal suffrage, this allowed political parties, including liberals and left-wing parties, to act out of principle on this front (instead of sacrificing female suffrage on expediency grounds). This was so, even though conservative and religious forces seized the opportunity and supported universal suffrage only in exchange for support on some of their own causes. Also, the absence of pressure to “prioritize class over gender” sometimes facilitated the collaboration between women’s groups and suffragists and political parties, as in Finland, where women’s associations were in close collaboration with the Labor Party, within which women had a strong and autonomous organization.95 The second group of countries that granted women suffrage relatively early (and, in any event, before World War II) is made up of those where modernization and democratization brought about male universal suffrage first, quite often, though not always, as a result of left-wing and progressive forces prioritizing on strategic grounds class over gender struggles. In these countries, three factors seem to have been particularly conducive to a relatively early access to female suffrage. First was the existence of strong women’s and suffragist movements heralding the cause of women’s franchise (as in the UK).96 Second, and in relation to this, was the extent to which the groups mobilizing in favor of women’s suffrage were able to overcome internal divisions over 94 See, on Finland, Korppi-Tommola, supra note 48, at 48; on Denmark, Fiig & Siim, supra note 68, at 61; on Estonia, Biin & Alby, supra note 85, at 111; on Latvia, Branta, supra note 85, at 95; on Lithuania, Birmontienė & Jurėnienė, supra note 85, at 79; on Poland, Fuszara, supra note 32, at 143; on the Netherlands, Bleijenbergh & Bussemaker, supra note 18, at 179–180; on Luxemburg, Kmec, supra note 29, at 160–161; and on Ireland, Hill, supra note 32, at 261–264. 95 See Korppi-Tommola, supra note 48, at 49–50. 96 See Cowman, supra note 52, at 274–280, 282–284. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/icon/article-abstract/12/1/4/628588 by UNIVERSIDAD DE SEVILLA user on 08 June 2018 24 I•CON 12 (2014), 4–34 key issues, including whether to prioritize the worker’s struggle over the women’s cause (as in Germany);97 what position to take regarding a nationalist struggle (as in Ireland);98 or whether to participate in World War I(as in Germany99 and the UK100). Finally, crucial was also the degree of support that the women’s suffrage movement managed to garner from progressive political parties or key male political figures, a collaboration that played an essential role in many countries, including Sweden, Austria, and Czechoslovakia,101 and/or from conservative sectors joining their cause on strategic grounds, as in Spain.102 By contrast, pervasive lack of political support, or even active resistance of opposing political forces; absence, weakness, or extreme division inside the women’s movement; and late access to democracy and independent statehood are primarily responsible for the belated achievement of female suffrage in the rest of the countries in Europe. When the First Republic (1911–1926) was proclaimed in Portugal and the Republican Party came to power, it stopped supporting female suffrage for fear of conservatism attached to women’s Catholicism, even though women had articulated much of their mobilization through Republican opposition. As a consequence, female suffrage was delayed until 1975 when the dictatorial regime of the Estado Novo 1926–1974 was finally replaced by a modern democratic regime.103 In Italy, a lack of durable allegiances among women’s associations when their primary loyalty was to political parties, and a lack of commitment to the suffrage cause from the main political parties, especially the Socialist Party, account for women’s late access to suffrage in 1946.104 Similarly, a pervasive lack of support from the main progressive parties and the absence of a 97 In Germany, suffrage was achieved when the divisions between bourgeois and socialist women subsided, and socialists’ ambivalence around female suffrage was overcome. See Sacksofsky, supra note 45, at 134–135. 98 See supra note 322 on Ireland. 99 Sacksofsky, supra note 45, at 134–135. 100 Cowman, supra note 52, at 279–280, 287. 101 In Sweden, women suffragists joined forces with liberals and social democrats against the resistance of conservatives (see Wangnerud, supra note 17, at 248). In Austria, success came as a result of low-profile women’s suffragism, which began at the end of the nineteenth century and was fuelled by international suffragism, the overcoming of class- and ethnicity-based divisions around nationalist struggles, and the support of Social Democrats who supported women’s suffrage only after men had gained universal suffrage, and against the resistance of Christian Socials and German nationalists (see Bader-Zaar, supra note 21, at 193, 194, 196–198). Also crucial in achieving the vote for women in Czechoslovakia was the allegiance between some key male politicians and women’s groups (of mostly liberal inclination), and, after the turn of the century, specifically suffragist groups, which became particularly active after men gained suffrage. See Musilová, supra note 86, at 214–216; and Ľubica Kobová, The Contexts of National and Gender Belonging: The History of Female Suffrage in Slovakia, in the Struggle for female Suffrage In euroPe, 225, at 229–230, 234. 102 In Spain, female suffrage was achieved under the Second Republic (1931–1936), through the joining of forces of the socialists, the conservatives and regionalists which made it possible to overcome the Republican opposition by a very small margin. See Aguado, supra note 25, at 293–295. 103 See Maria Lucía Amaral & Teresa Anjinho, Winning Women’s Vote, in the Struggle for female Suffrage In euroPe, 475, 479. 104 See Mancini, supra note 19, at 375–378, 382. This resistance became especially acute when the Union of Catholic Women formed in 1908 to neutralize the socialist advance (id. at 377). Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/icon/article-abstract/12/1/4/628588 by UNIVERSIDAD DE SEVILLA user on 08 June 2018 The achievement of female suffrage in Europe 25 suffragist or women’s movement are the main reasons for Belgium’s late granting of female suffrage in 1948.105 An internal split within the women’s movement, late suffragism, and a lack of commitment from mainstream political parties also explain why women in Greece only gained suffrage in 1952, and only with the aid of external pressure.106 Similarly, scissions within the women’s movement combined with lack of support from the main political parties explain the postponement of women’s suffrage in Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia, and also Switzerland.107 Finally, in other cases, the late enfranchisement of women was directly related to the fact that independent democratic statehood was itself late to come. Such a delay ensured that male and female universal suffrage would once again come together, and without the need for specific political mobilization or support, reflecting a global consensus of democratic standards. In other words, the later a country consolidated its democracy, decolonized, and achieved independent statehood, the higher the chances that it would automatically assume universal male and female suffrage to be part of the consolidated universal criteria, and the lesser the need for either political parties or women’s groups fighting for it locally.108 Both Malta and Cyprus are examples of late female suffrage linked to late decolonization.109 7. Women’s gradual achievement of citizenship: unsettling T.H. Marshall The evidence provided by the histories behind women’s access to suffrage in Europe support the views of scholars who have identified serious problems with the longstanding conventions around the modern notion of citizenship, as a container of rights. The theoretical exclusion of women from political life since the seventeenth 105 Fearing women’s conservative/religious vote, in an effort to unite anti-Catholic forces, liberals had agreed to support the socialist claim for universal male suffrage if the latter would let go of women’s suffrage. In the end, the example of neighboring countries (above all the fact that Germany, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands had recognized female suffrage after World War I, and France after World War II), women’s contribution to the war, and the strategic action of the Catholic party created the conditions for the bill that the Catholic and Communists submitted to parliament in 1948 that would enfranchise women. See Meier, supra note 33, at 411–412. 106 See Samiou, supra note 53, at 442–444. 107 On Bulgaria, see Dasjkalova, supra note 91, at 321–325, 327, 330–331; on Romania, see Cheşchebec, supra note 92, at 359 and on Slovenia, see Selišnik, supra note 93, at 339. In Switzerland, a lack of political support and fragmented women’s and suffrage movements seems to have been the cause for the late granting of suffrage rights (see BanaSzak, supra note 27, at 203–208). Additionally, the federal nature of the country seems to have worked against it, as the cantons of Appenzell A.R.and Appenzell I.R. strongly opposed state interference (id. at 208–214). 108 It has been noted that only three countries that became independent in the twentieth century (Austria, Ireland, and Libya) extended suffrage to men prior to women. The largest worldwide wave of countries extending the franchise to women occurred after 1930, in the wake of decolonization. After 1945, no newly independent country extended suffrage rights to men but not to women. See Ramirez etal., supra note 76, at 737–738. 109 On Malta, see Farrugia, supra note 86, at 392, 396. On Cyprus, see Agapiou-Josephides, supra note 80, at 453, 455–456, 462. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/icon/article-abstract/12/1/4/628588 by UNIVERSIDAD DE SEVILLA user on 08 June 2018 26 I•CON 12 (2014), 4–34 century, on the basis that women naturally lacked the liberty and independence needed for public life, rendered womanhood a disqualification for equal citizenship. By the mid-nineteenth century, women’s distinct position had become institutionalized through the denial of civil standing to wives, and the exclusion of women from the public sphere.110 The sexual contract had made women’s work in the fields of human reproduction, care, and management of dependency within the family indispensable for the mise-en-scène of men’s independence in the public sphere. The nuclear family had been constructed as the locus where gender relations are defined and supported, and women had been acknowledged to play a role as members of the community. To the extent that this ensured their status as citizens, it implied citizenship of a different kind from men. Instead of resting on the notion of independence, women’s citizenship revolved around dependency. As such, it constituted the flip-side of men’s citizenship, its opposite, and its enabling instrument at the sametime. This is clear in the connection with the different strands of citizenship, as articulated by T.H. Marshall.111 In his seminal article “Citizenship and Social Class,” Marshall divided citizenship into three parts, “dictated by history even more clearly than by logic”:112 civil, political, and social citizenship.113 Marshall’s reading on the unfolding of the concept explained how these three strands of citizenship were articulated on the basis of civil, political, and social rights, recognized in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, respectively. Civil rights articulated the independence individuals required to interact in the private sphere. As such, their recognition preceded rights of political participation, as only independent individuals could act as independent citizens in the public sphere. Social rights then came to guarantee the conditions that make possible individuals’ civil independence, and hence their political participation. Marshall’s analysis has been criticized on several accounts. Feminists, in particular, have criticized his failure to reflect how gender (and not only class) divisions structure denial of, and access to, citizenship rights.114 Women’s access to citizenship in Europe certainly does not fit within the model developed by Marshall. Rather, women’s access to citizenship is the inverted image of thatmodel. 7.1. Women’s civil disenfranchisement In European countries, the rights that articulate civil citizenship—that is, the rights necessary for individual freedom, understood as self-possession, legal personality, and market freedoms—were the last to be recognized to women. In fact, with the main exception of the Nordic countries, women gained full suffrage rights before qualifying as independent individuals, through the recognition of equal rights with men in 110 Pateman, supra note 1, at 331–348. 111 Thomas Humphrey Marshall, Citizenship and Social Class [1949], in t.h. marShall SocIology at the croSSroadS and other eSSayS 73–99 (1963). 112 Id. at 73. 113 Id. at 74. 114 See Walby, supra note 79, at 382, 384. Criticizing Marshall for his ethnocentrism, see also Michael Mann, Ruling Class Strategies and Citizenship, 21 SocIology 339 (1987); and Bryan S.Turner, Outline of a Theory of Citizenship, 24(2) SocIology 189 (1990). Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/icon/article-abstract/12/1/4/628588 by UNIVERSIDAD DE SEVILLA user on 08 June 2018 The achievement of female suffrage in Europe 27 the private sphere—including the capacity of married women to own property and administer their personal belongings, or to live anywhere other than where their husbands insisted—and the overcoming of marital-status related employment discrimination against women. Indeed, until well into the twentieth century, European countries articulated women’s relations to other individuals through their subordination to men. The decisive steps towards truly equal marriage rights were taken after 1945, and as a rule not before the 1960s and 1970s, marriage and family law being regarded as the paradigmatic domains of traditions.115 Also, the historical significance of married women’s exclusion from rights and duties of civil law cannot be underestimated, given that, until the extension of the franchise beyond the propertied classes, it was civil rather than political rights that conferred the status of citizen.116 This is true of the French, Germanic, and English common law traditions, the only significant exception being, as said, that of the Nordic countries. The French Civil Code, Code Napoleon, generally praised as the first realization of liberal principles in private law, fully entailed the preservation of “the traits of medieval patriarchy the longest and in its purest form.”117 The leading rule, that “The man owes his wife protection; the wife owes the husband obedience” (art. 213Cc), meant that, although a wife could formally own property, she was under the legal guardianship of her husband. Forever a minor according to the code, she had to request her husband’s authorization for a number of acts, including being a party to legal proceedings, signing contracts, setting herself up in a profession, doing financial transactions, or joining a political party or a trade union. This Code had a great impact on all countries subjected to French rule by the Napoleonic wars and left its mark even after those countries or regions had gained independence. This was true of Italy, Spain, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, and some parts of the German states. In English common law, the so-called coverture remained the dominant paradigm. Epitomized by William Blackstone’s dictum in his commentary on English common law (“In law husband and wife are one person, and the husband is that person”),118 it meant that a married woman could not own property or make contracts without her husband’s consent. Free access to both education and employment but also equal custodial rights over the children were denied to her. Enforced in 1900, with its family and marriage regulation in force until 1953 and 1957 respectively, the German Civil Code reaffirmed the husband’s right to decide in “all matters affecting communal life of the couple” and also re-established paternal authority. Moreover, the husband was in principle granted the exclusive right to manage property and to intervene in his wife’s labor contracts. Even in communist dictatorships, women’s official equality with men was translated into equal political rights 115 lISter etal., supra note 9, at 31. 116 Ursula Vogel, Under Permanent Guardianship: Women’s Condition Under Modern Civil Law, in the PolItIcal IntereStS of gender 135 (Kathleen B.Jones & Anna G.Jónasdóttir eds., 1988). 117 lISter etal., supra note 9, at 32, citing marIanne WeBer, ehefrau und mutter In der rechtSentWIcklung: eIne eInführung (1907). 118 lISter etal., supra note 9, at 32, citing Ursula Vogel, Fiction of Community: Property Relations in Marriage in European and American Legal Systems of the Nineteenth Century, in PrIvate laW and SocIal InequalIty In the InduStrIal age 91 (Willibald Steinmetz ed., 2000). Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/icon/article-abstract/12/1/4/628588 by UNIVERSIDAD DE SEVILLA user on 08 June 2018 28 I•CON 12 (2014), 4–34 (and into social rights and benefits) before full civil equality with men was actually spelledout. Only Scandinavian countries present meaningful exceptions, exceptions which must be related to the features of their transition from agrarian to modern societies, and, in particular, the way this transition skipped the bourgeois phase.119 After the middle of the nineteenth century, gender-based guardianship was formally abolished for all women, married women’s capacity being connected to a rather early granting of property rights to all women (1874 in Sweden, 1899 in Denmark, and 1888 in Norway). Marriage legislation reform also took place several decades sooner than in most other European countries (Sweden 1920, Denmark 1925, Norway 1927, and Finland 1929),120 providing for equal property rights, divorce liberalization, and complete abolition of male authority, as well as equal custody of the children. It is therefore interesting to observe that Scandinavian women were among the first to get the right to vote.121 7.2. Women’s social disenfranchisement The different timing of the achievement of women’s and men’s citizenship rights also applies to social rights. In contrast to the sequence T.H. Marshall theorized using the example of the British male citizen, an opposite order applied to women. Women were granted social rights before gaining suffrage rights, and of course before qualifying as independent individuals in the private sphere. In the UK, women were first covered by some restrictive and disciplinary social rights under Poor Laws, and then gained some social rights as mothers in the early twentieth century.122 Asimilar sequence can be observed in most countries, again with the Nordic exception, where the welfare state developed hand in hand with family reform legislation disestablishing the breadwinner model and framing the care of children as a collective responsibility. This general sequence explains why the social rights granted to women, preceding both political and civil equality, were not aimed at enabling women to act as independent individuals. Women’s civil subordination to men was ensured and in fact, those social rights that could have worked towards women’s economic independence, such as access to education and to the liberal professions, were not among the first to come to women. No surprise they became the primary target of many feminist activists123 and women’s organizations including the Danish Women’s Society, the Belgian League for Women’s Rights, the Finnish Women’s Association, the Latvian Jaunā Strāva, the General German Women’s Association, the Hungarian National Association of 119 lISter etal., supra note 9, at 34. 120 For a historical analysis of the Nordic welfare state and its connection to the family model, see also the nordIc model of marrIage and the Welfare State 27 (Kari Melby, Anu Pylkkänen, Bente Rosenbeck & Christina Carlsson-Wetterberg eds., 2000). 121 lISter etal., supra note 9, at 35. 122 Id. at 36. 123 Noteworthy were Teréz Brunszvik, Blanka Teleki, and Hermin Beniczky Pálné Veres in Hungary; Anna Karima in Bulgaria; Gabrielė Petkevičaitė-Bitė in Lithuania; and Sappho Leontias, Polyxeni Loizias, and Persophone Papadopoulou in Cyprus. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/icon/article-abstract/12/1/4/628588 by UNIVERSIDAD DE SEVILLA user on 08 June 2018