"It cannot be said that we have universal suffrage if only men are included." The Electoral Reform of 1907 in the Discourse of the Czech Women's Suffrage Movement
Abstract
The electoral reform of 1907 for the lower house of the Austrian parliament abolished the system of corporate representation rested on curiae and the universal male suffrage became henceforth equal. Not only was women's suffrage not included in the reform, but also the rest of previously existing restricted women's voting rights for the lower house of the parliament was cancelled by it.
The aim of the article is to trace how the reform, and especially the fact that it did not include women's suffrage, was portrayed by the representatives of the women's movement and how the rep-resentatives themselves understood and used the term "universal suffrage". The analysis shows that the representatives of the women's suffrage movement refused the notion of "universality" limited to men and argued that suffrage would be truly universal only if also women were included.
Nevertheless, the meaning of the fact, that women's suffrage had not been not included in the proposed reform, was presented differently by the representa-tives of civic and national socialist women's movement on one hand and the representatives of social democratic women's movement on the other hand.