Droga do prawa wyborczego dla kobiet w Niemczech. Czy tylko dar rewolucji 1918 roku?
Remarks on granting the right to vote to German women. Just a gift of the revolution in 1918?

Summary/Abstract: In November 1918, the revolutionary government in Germany gave women the right to vote. The aim of the article is to show the different interpretative perspectives from which this event is presented in the literature of the subject, and then to answer the question whether the pursuits of the bourgeois women activists who since the 1890s were increasingly seeking the fullness of political rights for women, could have been successful. In other words, could women in Wilhelminian Germany obtain the right to vote. In order to answerthe above research problem, several research methods were employed, such as critical analysis of the literature and sources, comparative method and contextual analysis. The use of the latter method was important to identify the background of the ideological debate on women’s political rights in the environment of German suffragettes and to indicate the role of the paradigm of motherhood in building public acceptance of women’s participation in politics. The grounding of women’s claims to electoral rights in their social tasks was not unique to the German debate on political gender equality. However, this argument was insufficient for the German ruling elites, as was women’s work for the state during the war years. The announcement of systemic changes in the spring of 1917 did not take into account the right to vote for women. Years of cooperation of bourgeois women activists with liberals and awareness-raising actions did not bring the expected results. From the conducted analyses it follows that in the Wilhelminian Reich women could not count on full participation in political life within a short time span. The revolution changed the legal order in Germany, but did not stop the public debate on the subject. Its achievements were used in the election campaign to the National Assembly and thus contributed to a high turnout among women.

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