The goal of this study is to investigate how the writers from the female association for women’s rights, LKPR, manoeuvred the gender stereotypes in their newspaper Rösträtt för kvinnor between 1912 and 1919. The writers responded to male and female opponents that claimed that women did not belong in politics, higher education or the public with logical reasoning, humour and persistence. By operating through the newspaper the writers gained access to the public and could publicly make their opinions heard. They wrote about official women´s rights meetings, collected mass petitions and held local and national meetings. In the pursuit of full political rights for women, the writers came to give prominence to femininity as an important factor to why women should be included in the political landscape. Feminine attributes such as motherhood and their social conscience was described as a strong potential as a contributing force in the Swedish politics, especially after the first World War. The writers emphasized education as a means for political change, first-hand through LKPRs educational social courses which were held across Sweden with the goal to educate and engage women in the pursuit of gaining women’s right to vote. The importance of education was found indirectly in their emphasis on academic achievements and titles of women in Sweden and elsewhere, but also in the many advertisements regarding different kinds of education for women. In addition to that the writers reports frequently of the political demands on equal education that LKPR was a part of. Important women of LKPR were often acknowledged in articles for their educational successes, academic titles and their dedication for the work of women’s rights, which functioned as a positive example of how an ideal women’s rights women should be. The writers constructed an ideal women’s-rights-woman which was politically and academically educated, an active force in the fight for women’s right and at the same time a well behaved mother and housewife. This ideal woman had the chance to challenge the gender roles of the time and to operate in the gap between what was defined as masculine and feminine in order to achieve the right for women to vote. My research can contribute to the exciting academic field because of the new material, the newspaper that have not been closely discussed before but also because of the new knowledge presented of the indirect focus of education and the constructed ideal women’s-rights-women.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:umu-166529 |
| Date | January 2019 |
| Creators | Strömberg, Carin |
| Publisher | Umeå universitet, Institutionen för idé- och samhällsstudier |
| 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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