Background Document - Danish Institute for Parties and Democracy

THE DANISH PROCESS OF DEMOCRATISATION
The Danish success is greatest on the national level. Women have found it harder to
break into local politics, where historical male dominance has survived, notably on
the leadership level. Women hold around thirty per cent of the seats on municipal
councils, and there is only one female mayor in ten.
Achieving this success has been a lengthy process. It took seventy years from the
time women’s suffrage was instituted until female politicians made up a so-called
critical mass of thirty per cent, which any minority generally speaking must achieve
in order to obtain real influence.
In Denmark, as everywhere else in the world, women’s political history is an integrated
part of the national development towards democracy. And in Denmark, as
in other Western countries, the women’s movement has been a central player in the
struggles for political rights and, subsequently, for political representation.
Over the course of the nineteenth century, Denmark – initially bringing up the
rear of the democratic transition that created the modern Western world around the
year 1800 – became a pioneer democracy when the Scandinavian welfare model became
an international brand. The model – based on equality of status and notably
characterised by a high degree of inclusion of women on the labour market, and a high
degree of female political representation combined with public child care policies and
care for the sick and the elderly – has been labelled as woman-friendly.
The history of democracy in Denmark is thoroughly evolutionary and remarkably
undramatic. The country’s first free Constitution, from 1849, had been carefully prepared,
and was adopted in the atmosphere of broad consensus that still characterises
political life. Thus, the absolute monarch remained as constitutional monarch following
adoption of the Constitutional Act, and today, Denmark is one of only a handful of
democratic monarchies in the world.
“ The history of democracy in Denmark is
evolutionary and remarkably undramatic.“
Danish democracy was imported from abroad. Following the uprising against British
colonial rule in North America and the founding of the United States of America as
an independent nation in 1776, a flood of revolutions swept over Europe in three separate
waves. The two first waves did not reach Denmark with enough force to overthrow
the absolute monarchy, but they initiated a much-needed process of modernisation.
During the time of the French Revolution (1789-99), a series of comprehensive
land and educational reforms were carried out in Denmark. Farmers were released
from servitude under the landed aristocracy and were granted the opportunity to buy
the land they farmed. During this period, the establishment of teacher training colleges
brought improvements to education, which, particularly in rural areas, had been
of a meagre standard. Compulsory general education was instituted in 1814.
The July Revolution of 1830 led to cautious democratisation through the establishment
of elected regional councils – the so-called Advisory Provincial Estates – and
the fledgling beginnings of municipal government. Only a few per cent of the male
population were eligible to vote, but in the years leading up to 1848 the new political
arenas, along with the easing of censorship and a modern press, created a bourgeois
public sphere. Knowledge of international developments was no longer the privilege
of a tiny academic elite that was in command of the major European languages and
undertook educational journeys to the centres of culture. Broad swathes of the pop-
WOMEN IN POLITICS DANISH INSTITUTE FOR PARTIES AND DEMOCRACY PAGE 46