When Socialists Won Women’s Suffrage
Contrary to the myth that socialists have always ignored gender oppression, women’s suffrage was first won by socialist feminists — and working-class revolt.
Cover of Palvejitarlehti (Maids’ Journal), a radical Finnish newspaper from the turn of the century.
There are a lot of different ways to discredit working-class politics. As the continued promotion of the “Bernie Bro” myth illustrates, one of the most popular today is to claim that socialists ignore women’s oppression. Elaborate versions of this argument fill the blogosphere, Twitter, and academia. By focusing only on economic issues and class, we are told, the socialist movement has always marginalized women and their specific demands for liberation.
Like all good liberal myths, these arguments rely on bad history. Working-class feminism has a long and rich history. For over a century working women fought for their own liberation through the socialist movement.
Few cases better illustrate this point (or have been more buried by history) than that of turn-of-the-century Finland. In 1906, through a mass general strike and working-class insurgency against the Russian Empire, it became the first nation to grant universal suffrage. Socialists were at the forefront.
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