Background Document - Danish Institute for Parties and Democracy

In point form, these insights, which seem commonplace today, may be summed
up thus:
´ Formal equality is a necessary, but not a sufficient, prerequisite of true equality.
´ Direct gender discrimination is only the tip of the iceberg, with wide-spread indirect gen-
der discrimination hiding beneath the surface.
´ The private is political.
´ Civilian, political, and social rights are based on sexual and reproductive rights.
But in 1915, equality before the law and political rights were the undisputed road
to equal status. Though there were discussions in what remained of the women’s
movement of forming a women’s party, and though women’s lists were entered in
the first municipal elections, the main tenet throughout the inter-war years was that
women should enrol in, and run for office via, existing political parties.
However, in the parties the interest in female voters was higher than the interest
in female candidates, and more so once the first election results had been reviewed.
Political parties maintained that the state no longer had a part to play given that direct
gender discrimination in legislation had been abolished. From here on out, it was
up to civil society and the market to create a fitting gender balance. Until 1945, this
meant one female Member of Parliament per party – the so-called token woman.
The women’s movement thus ended up with the full responsibility for increased
political representation of women. To begin with, the movement took up the gauntlet
by launching a nationwide educational programme in citizenship, and by facilitating
the founding of women’s organisations within the political parties. Thanks to the
initiative of members active in the women’s cause, all political parties had women’s
committees in the 1930s.
The close collaboration between the women’s movement and the political parties
could also be seen in the fact that women’s organisations until the end of the 1970s
drew their chairman from the ranks of prominent female politicians – preferably government
ministers – and that the parties took turns holding the post.
Following the Second World War, the women’s movement expanded its repertoire
to include proper electoral campaigns. In the 1945 elections, the “vote for a woman”campaign
was launched. This was to become a fixture of Danish electoral campaigns
for many years to come. The concept is simple: activists position themselves outside
voting stations carrying posters encouraging voters on their way to the ballot to vote
for a woman. This is also when the women’s movement founded the tradition of crossparty
election meetings – a tradition still alive today.
The most spectacular campaign was carried out in the municipal elec-tions of
1970, when the entire female elite in the country was mobilised in a large-scale media
push. The weekend preceding the elections, every nationwide newspaper as well as the
major regional papers carried opinion pieces urging voters to vote for a female candidate
and written by politicians from all parties, leading members of the women’s organisations,
and famous artists. Demonstrating the strength of the feminist heritage,
every single opinion writer drew on the classical arguments of justice, representation,
and resources in their plea for increased political representation for women.
In 1945, the women’s movement also suggested the implementation of a quota
system in the form of a proposal that all parties be mandated to reserve 33 per cent
of the spots on their lists of candidates for women. However, this type of affirmative
action did not receive broad support until the third wave of the movement: between
1977 and 1996, several parties operated with some form of quota system or other.
By this time the glass ceiling had, however, been broken by the second feminist
wave, which paved the way for a new understanding of the entire concept of politics
WOMEN IN POLITICS DANISH INSTITUTE FOR PARTIES AND DEMOCRACY PAGE 54