The women who fought for suffrage during the turn of the century were opposing many of the current conceptions about how women were supposed to act, primarily in the sense that they were active, had agency and created their own space to maneuver. Most research on the suffrage movement in Sweden has focused on the central organization and not on the local grassroots movements. The purpose of this study is therefore to examine women’s collective space to maneuver in Umeå by studying women’s organization in Umeå Förening för kvinnans politiska rösträtt (FKPR) during the period 1903-1921. The study is carried out by examining preserved material from the organization’s protocols and local newspapers during the time period. The study uses Maud Eduard’s theory on space to maneuver in order to analyze the material. Eduard’s theory focuses on how women’s organizations are important in the process of undoing gender and how the organization itself has impact on women’s collective space to maneuver. The analytic part of the study highlights how conceptions about gender and class were central for the women’s space to maneuver and that Umeå FKPR both challenged and reproduced these conceptions. The results show that the collective actions of the suffragist-women contributed to make visible the constructions of the masculine and the feminine. The actions by the suffragettes in Umeå therefore contributed to drawing attention to the fact that gender was a political dimension. The study concludes by discussing the actions of women in relation to their space to maneuver, the local context and the importance of women’s networks.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:umu-172977 |
| Date | January 2020 |
| Creators | Ragnarsson, Ellen |
| Publisher | Umeå universitet, Umeå centrum för genusstudier (UCGS) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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