Resisting Democratisation: Arguments Against Female Enfranchisement Among Members of the Swedish Parliament 1866–1918

In this contribution, we analyse the parliamentary minutes debating the issue of women’s voting rights in Sweden from the start of the two-chamber parliament in 1866 until 1918, when women were finally granted voting rights on the same terms as men. We find that most arguments belonged to one of two broad categories: those that were against women’s suffrage as a matter of principle, and those that could accept women’s right to vote but not at the present time. The arguments of principle were without exception used by conservatives, and while some liberals did occasionally use postponement arguments, this was also the realm of conservative argumentation. Not a single social democrat argued against female voting rights in the analysed minutes. Furthermore, we find that the conservative arguments of principle were remarkably stable and essentially did not change during the 52 years our analysis covers. The postponement arguments varied more over time as some of the more common ones, such as the need for further investigation, lost credibility.