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100 years of women’s right to vote in Germany: a reason to celebrate?

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Since the 12th century. November 1918 can be used to select women in Germany, and was elected. The path was stony and difficult. And the goal is not yet achieved. A historical review.



Men are too emotional to choose, writes the American writer and women’s activist, Alice Duer Miller in 1915, in her book “Are Women People?”. “This shows their behavior at baseball games and political negotiations. And its innate tendency to violence makes them for Government functions disabled.” The author includes in her Essay, four further arguments for why men should be excluded from the right to vote. It is Miller’s was an ironic answer to the absurd of that time as well, however, serious arguments against the right of women to vote. A Protest against the discrimination of women in the world since the middle of the 19th century. Century had become increasingly louder.

The long struggle of women for equality

Olympe de Gouges was a French playwright, novelist, feminist, Playwright and one of the first Pioneers in the fight for equality. In 1791, at that time, as in France, by the French Revolution, everything seemed possible, she wrote the “Declaration of the rights of woman and citizen”. Two years later, she was arrested for their demands and visions, and executed by Guillotine. “There were Visionaries, who had already noted very early on that equality of women and you have calls. Olympe de Gouges is one of them. But as a political movement, the women’s movement has, Essentially, only in the middle of the 19th century. Century developed,” says the legal historian Anna Katharina Mangold.

Olympe de Gouges: the campaigner for women’s rights

“First of all, the starting point was not only the right to vote, but it was also a very basic Exclusions of legal action. Because women were considered a priori as subjects of the law. An example is the so-called gender tutelage: women were not considered per se as a business, but always had to be represented. First from her father then to her husband, or if they were not married, a close relative.”

The not wanted to accept the women in Germany longer. Before the First world war, the women’s movement was due to the first successes, still optimistic. The outbreak of war in the Background, only after the movement picked up again and she was louder than ever. “There is a widespread assumption that the women have were active in the war and in the war administration, men beige and industry and heavy industry in men’s professions are engaged, that it is no longer easily justifiable, why should you continue to the right to vote to be excluded,” explains Mangold. The fighters for women’s suffrage at the end of saw shortly before the war, immediately before your long-awaited destination.

Introduction of women’s suffrage in Germany

In his Easter message in the year 1917, the German Emperor Wilhelm II, democratic reforms promised – in the right to vote. But about the right of women to vote, he lost not a word. The indignant, the Activists, and so they were again at the forefront. 12. November 1918, the legal basis for the law. This put an end to a decades-long process in Germany, the bourgeois moderates, the bourgeois radicals, as well as the proletarian women’s movement, actions, petitions, and meetings were intensely fighting for the right of women to vote. In the calling of the Council of people’s deputies of 12. November it is then: “All elections to public bodies are now the same, secret, direct, universal suffrage on the basis of the proportional election system for all at least 20 years old male and female persons.” A milestone for the women’s movement.

Kaiser Wilhelm II: Reform of the electoral law, Yes, but not for all

A pioneering achievement, it was not, however, because in some Scandinavian countries women’s suffrage was introduced already some years previously – and yet: “There are countries that have only introduced much later, the women’s right to vote. I would like to point out that a primordial democratic state like Switzerland, which is always cited as the model country in terms of the basis of democracy in Europe, first in 1971, has introduced at the Federal level the right of women to vote and the cantonal level, such as in Appenzell-Innerrhoden, only in 1991,” says Anna Katharina Mangold.

The law of 1918 was Central to the struggle of women for equality, but the wording of article 109, paragraph 2 of the Weimar Constitution still sounded hesitant: both men and women have fundamentally the same civil rights and duties. “You might think: Aha, if you have the same state, so ‘in principle’ civil rights and obligations, then you are entitled to the same. Far from it. Because ‘in principle’ means in the legal way of thinking is always that, there are exceptions and these exceptions were designed to be very extensive,” says Mangold.

Complete equality – de jure

Only in 1949, this article was regulated by the basic law. Article 3, paragraph 2 of the basic law stipulates that men and women are equal. In the first half of the 1990s, this set is supplemented by a second: the state shall promote the actual implementation of equal rights between women and men and works towards the elimination of existing disadvantages. “This set of 2 shows clearly that it is not enough just to provide formally equal rights, but that they also need to be actually implemented, such as the basic law puts it. And this is actually the Phase we’re in now,” said Mangold.

Legal Historian Dr. Anna Katharina Mangold

Even if the equality of all people is enshrined in the Constitution, is not but a prohibition, especially in times of #MeToo or the Information on abortion is clear, that in society, women still have the same position as men. More still: “It is enough, if we look at how court-run process in rape processes. The law is a conservative science, which is still occupied mostly by men and practiced, the fear of something to lose. This means that all basic human rights such as physical integrity, the need to protect the state, effectively, be put in question.”

A book about strong women

A book about 50 strong women

5 countries, 50 women, 125 pages: on the Occasion of the anniversary for women’s right to vote, a just published book on outstanding women who have held on to despite social Resistances to your Ideal of equality is portrayed. It shows The struggle of women for equality is a global one, which is conducted in many countries around the world at the same time. “If you visited cities, you see most of the monuments of men, or the roads are dedicated to men. With our book, we wanted to make the creative power of women is visible. We have found very many women, but we had to meet at the end, then, but unfortunately, a choice,” says Sabine Geller, one of the Editors of the book. The Band’s “Danube Women’s Stories” portrayed women from Germany, Austria, Hungary, Romania, and Serbia and commends them for their achievements in various areas of social life. It is published in German and English in the Danube Books.

And: It fits in with the Zeitgeist. 100 years after women were allowed to participate actively in political life, has not ended their struggle for social equality for a long time.

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