Rösträttsrörelsens kvinnor - i konflikt och i samförstånd

Abstract

On the basis of sociologist Alberto Melucci's theory of social movements, I investigate the Swedish suffrage movement known as Landsföreningen för kvinnans politiska rösträtt, LKPR (The National Association for Votes for Women). I study this movement both as a collective actor with a collective constructed identity and as an arena for internal conflict. I argue that LKPR contributed towards a shift in and extension of the boundaries of politics by demanding the abolition of the so called women's bar which disenfranchised all women; by converting women's disadvantages into a politics; by questioning the division of public and private, and not least by contributing to women's entry into new spheres. The LKPR was the largest women's organisation at the turn of the century consisting of women from different class background and different party political affiliation. It succeeded however in mobilizing women in the struggle for civil rights by very actively and consciously creating a collective classless but nonetheless genderized identity. The suffragists internal compromises resulted in an official advocacy of independence form party politics, and according to the statutes, the association was to remain neutral in relation to the emerging party system. But in practice the organisation had close relations to the liberals. I also show that in some respects there is reason to speak of the LKPR as a class movement even if the organisation can be seen as a strategic coalition which concealed the problematics of class. For tactical reasons, in order to hold a broad based movement together and in order to be allowed a hearing in public debate at all, the LKPR'S propaganda put forward an apparently safe and consensual notion of gender relations whereby women and men were seen as mutually dependent and thus complementary. These ideas were inspired by 'practical' considerations. Nationalism also functioned as a unifying set of values within the LKPR and the members agreed that women's exclusion from politics was unjust. The vote too was regarded as a key to a change in the relation between the genders in society. The artide, however, highlights the internal conflicts within the association rather than the conflict with encompassing male society. I show that the internal conflicts over the description of goals, for instance, often had ideological implications.