scholarly journals A Finnish socialist female parliamentarian stopped on the Dutch border : The (de)politicization of Finnish women’s suffrage in Dutch battles on votes for women

2020 ◽  
Vol 133 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-75
Author(s):  
Pasi Ihalainen
Keyword(s):  
Class Struggle ◽  
Transnational History ◽  
Illegal Immigrant ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
Women's Suffrage ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
White Slavery ◽  
Public Controversy ◽  
Research Article ◽  
Women’S Suffrage

Abstract A Finnish socialist female parliamentarian stopped on the Dutch border: the (de)politicization of Finnish women’s suffrage in Dutch battles on votes for womenThis research article in transnational history analyses an incident during which Hilja Pärssinen, a Finnish socialist woman MP, was stopped on the Dutch border in September 1913 on her way to visit a suffragette college in London. This two-hour event at the border and public controversy that followed were clashes between competing ideological and gendered discourses on women’s political agency. The incident was a nexus of intersecting discourses on a range of issues: Dutch and international debates on women’s suffrage, discourse on ‘white slavery’, racial prejudices towards East Europeans, Marxist class struggle discourse, and fears of socialism. During the incident, the authorities seemed to be casting the identity of an illegal immigrant or a Russian prostitute on Pärssinen. Provoked against her psycho-physical experiences, she protested by performing that identity. Afterwards, transnationally connected socialists politicized the case in their fight for women’s political rights, while the authorities and the non-socialist press consistently depoliticized it.

A Fundamental Component

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Goodier ◽  
Karen Pastorello
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Black Women ◽  
White Women ◽  
New York State ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
Women's Suffrage ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
York State ◽  
Racial Relations ◽  
Women’S Suffrage

This chapter looks at the story of black women in the New York State woman suffrage movement, which is marked by strained racial relations and exclusionary practices. Black women, like white women, saw the vote as a panacea, able to solve their specific problems relating to racial violence, education, employment, and workers' rights. Although white women seldom invited black women to join in their suffrage activities, black women found ways to advance the cause and participate in the movement. Indeed, pervasive racism complicated black women's suffrage activism, but it cannot diminish their contributions to mainstream suffragism. Rarely separating women's political rights from other fundamental rights, black women's suffrage activism showed creativity and ingenuity and did not always mirror white women's activist strategies. Ultimately, black women's influence on black male voters helped secure women's political enfranchisement in New York State.

Dynamics of democratization and nationalization: The significance of women's suffrage and women's political participation in parliament in the Second Polish Republic

2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (5) ◽  
pp. 809-822
Author(s):  
Angelique Leszczawski-Schwerk
Keyword(s):  
Interwar Period ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Specific Reference ◽  
Women's Suffrage ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Members Of Parliament ◽  
Transformation Processes ◽  
Women’S Suffrage

This paper will examine processes of democratization and “nationalization” with specific reference to the Second Polish Republic (II Rzeczpospolita) and the interwar period. Starting from a consideration of broader theoretical concepts concerning transformation processes and their relation to the analytical categories of gender and ethnicity, it will discuss the introduction of political rights for women in 1918 as a case study for the role women's suffrage played in the process of democratization. A closer examination of the activity of three selected female members of parliament — a Polish, Jewish, and Ukrainian MP — in the Polish parliament will help to clarify if and how gender and ethnicity mattered in political institutions. It is argued that especially their speeches, by addressing specifically political demands in a certain way, that is, how they spoke in the name of their sex, nation, and ethnicity, show a close interlinkage between democratization and nationalization during the Second Polish Republic. From this will emerge a more general outlook on the extent to which the recognition of women's suffrage molded the basis for equality between women and men, and if the legally guaranteed equality really included all citizens of the Polish state.

Innovation by Political Outsiders

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Epstein
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Women's Suffrage ◽  
Wall Street ◽  
Nineteenth Amendment ◽  
Suffrage Movement ◽  
Communication Goals ◽  
Print Era ◽  
Women’S Suffrage

This chapter explores communication innovations made by American social movements over time. These movements share political communication goals and outsider status, which helps to connect innovation decisions across movements and across time. The chapter primarily explores two long-lasting movements. First is the women’s suffrage movement, which lasted over seventy years of the print era from the mid-nineteenth century until the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. Next is the long-lasting fight against racial discrimination, which led to the modern civil rights movement starting in the print era, but coming of age along with television during the 1950s and 1960s. Both the women’s suffrage movement and civil rights movement utilized innovative tactics with similarly mild results until mainstream coverage improved. Finally, these historical movements are compared with movements emerging during the internet era, including the early Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and the Resist movement.

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