Editing Women's suffrage (section)

==== Sweden ====
[[File:Maria Gustava Gyllenstierna SP156.jpg|thumb|left|The Swedish writer [[Maria Gustava Gyllenstierna]] (1672–1737); as a taxpaying property owner, and a woman of legal majority due to her widowed status, she belonged to the women granted suffrage in accordance with the constitution of the [[Age of Liberty]] (1718–1772).]]

During the [[Age of Liberty]] (1718–1772), Sweden had conditional women's suffrage.<ref name="Karlsson Sjögren" /> Until the reform of 1865, the local elections consisted of mayoral elections in the cities, and elections of parish vicars in the countryside parishes. The ''Sockenstämma'' was the local parish council who handled local affairs, in which the parish vicar presided and the local peasantry assembled and voted, an informally regulated process in which women are reported to have participated already in the 17th century.<ref name="Du Rietz">Du Rietz, Anita, Kvinnors entreprenörskap: under 400 år, 1. uppl., Dialogos, Stockholm, 2013</ref> The national elections consisted of the election of the representations to the [[Riksdag of the Estates]].

Suffrage was gender neutral and therefore applied to women as well as men if they filled the qualifications of a voting citizen.<ref name="Karlsson Sjögren" /> These qualifications were changed during the course of the 18th-century, as well as the local interpretation of the credentials, affecting the number of qualified voters: the qualifications also differed between cities and countryside, as well as local or national elections.<ref name="Karlsson Sjögren" />

Initially, the right to [[vote]] in local city elections (mayoral elections) was granted to every ''burgher'', which was defined as a taxpaying citizen with a [[guild]] membership.<ref name="Karlsson Sjögren" /> Women as well as men were members of guilds, which resulted in women's suffrage for a limited number of women.<ref name="Karlsson Sjögren" />
In 1734, suffrage in both national and local elections, in cities as well as countryside, was granted to every property owning taxpaying citizen of [[legal majority]].<ref name="Karlsson Sjögren" /> This extended suffrage to all taxpaying property owning women whether guild members or not, but excluded married women and the majority of unmarried women, as married women were defined as legal minors, and unmarried women were minors unless they applied for legal majority by royal dispensation, while widowed and divorced women were of legal majority.<ref name="Karlsson Sjögren" /> The 1734 reform increased the participation of women in elections from 55 to 71 percent.<ref name="Karlsson Sjögren" />

[[File:C1910 Signe Bergman Swedish suffragist.jpg|thumb|upright|Swedish suffragist [[Signe Bergman]], {{Circa|1910|lk=no}}]]

Between 1726 and 1742, women voted in 17 of 31 examined mayoral elections.<ref name="Karlsson Sjögren" /> Reportedly, some women voters in mayoral elections preferred to appoint a male to vote for them by [[proxy voting|proxy]] in the city hall because they found it embarrassing to do so in person, which was cited as a reason to abolish women's suffrage by its opponents.<ref name="Karlsson Sjögren" /> The custom to appoint to vote by proxy was however used also by males, and it was in fact common for men, who were absent or ill during elections, to appoint their wives to vote for them.<ref name="Karlsson Sjögren" /> In [[Vaasa]] in Finland (then a Swedish province), there was opposition against women participating in the town hall discussing political issues as this was not seen as their right place, and women's suffrage appears to have been opposed in practice in some parts of the realm: when [[Anna Elisabeth Baer]] and two other women petitioned to vote in [[Turku]] in 1771, they were not allowed to do so by town officials.<ref name="books.google.se"/>

In 1758, women were excluded from mayoral elections by a new regulation by which they could no longer be defined as burghers, but women's suffrage was kept in the national elections as well as the countryside parish elections.<ref name="Karlsson Sjögren" /> Women participated in all of the eleven national elections held up until 1757.<ref name="Karlsson Sjögren" /> In 1772, women's suffrage in national elections was abolished by demand from the burgher estate. Women's suffrage was first abolished for taxpaying unmarried women of legal majority, and then for widows.<ref name="Karlsson Sjögren" />
However, the local interpretation of the prohibition of women's suffrage varied, and some cities continued to allow women to vote: in [[Kalmar]], [[Växjö]], [[Västervik]], [[Simrishamn]], [[Ystad]], [[Åmål]], [[Karlstad]], [[Bergslagen]], [[Dalarna]] and [[Norrland]], women were allowed to continue to vote despite the 1772 ban, while in [[Lund]], [[Uppsala]], [[Skara]], Turku, [[Gothenburg]] and [[Marstrand]], women were strictly barred from the vote after 1772.<ref name="Karlsson Sjögren" />

[[File:Demonstrationståg för kvinnorösträtten, Göteborg - Nordiska Museet - NMA.0032617.jpg|thumb|left|Women's suffrage demonstration in Gothenburg, June 1918]]

While women's suffrage was banned in the mayoral elections in 1758 and in the national elections in 1772, no such bar was ever introduced in the local elections in the countryside, where women therefore continued to vote in the local parish elections of vicars.<ref name="Karlsson Sjögren" /> In a series of reforms in 1813–1817, unmarried women of legal majority, "Unmarried maiden, who has been declared of legal majority", were given the right to vote in the ''sockestämma'' (local parish council, the predecessor of the communal and city councils), and the ''kyrkoråd'' (local church councils).<ref>Ann Margret Holmgren: Kvinnorösträttens historia i de nordiska länderna (1920).</ref>

In 1823, a suggestion was raised by the mayor of Strängnäs to reintroduce women's suffrage for taxpaying women of legal majority (unmarried, divorced and widowed women) in the mayoral elections, and this right was reintroduced in 1858.<ref name="Du Rietz"/>

In 1862, tax-paying women of legal majority (unmarried, divorced and widowed women) were again allowed to vote in municipal elections, making Sweden the first country in the world to grant women the right to vote.<ref name="jstor.org"/> This was after the introduction of a new political system, where a new local authority was introduced: the communal municipal council. The right to vote in municipal elections applied only to people of legal majority, which excluded married women, as they were juridically under the guardianship of their husbands. In 1884 the suggestion to grant women the right to vote in national elections was initially voted down in Parliament.<ref>{{cite book|author1=Christer Palmquist  |author2=Hans Kristian Widberg |name-list-style=amp | title = Millenium. Samhällskunska| publisher = Bonniers| isbn = 978-91-622-5995-2| year = 2004| page = 317| language = sv}}</ref> During the 1880s, the [[Married Woman's Property Rights Association]] had a campaign to encourage the female voters, qualified to vote in accordance with the 1862 law, to use their vote and increase the participation of women voters in the elections, but there was yet no public demand for women's suffrage among women. In 1888, the [[temperance movement|temperance]] activist [[Emilie Rathou]] became the first woman in Sweden to demand the right for women's suffrage in a public speech.<ref>Emilie Rathou, urn:sbl:7563, Svenskt biografiskt lexikon (art av [[Hjördis Levin]]), hämtad May 30, 2015.</ref> In 1899, a delegation from the [[Fredrika Bremer Association]] presented a suggestion of women's suffrage to prime minister [[Erik Gustaf Boström]]. The delegation was headed by [[Agda Montelius]], accompanied by [[Gertrud Adelborg]], who had written the demand. This was the first time the Swedish women's movement themselves had officially presented a demand for suffrage.

In 1902 the [[National Association for Women's Suffrage (Sweden)|Swedish Society for Woman Suffrage]] was founded, supported by the [[Stockholms Allmänna Kvinnoklubb|Social Democratic women's Clubs]].<ref>Barbro Hedwall (2011). Susanna Eriksson Lundqvist. red.. Vår rättmätiga plats. Om kvinnornas kamp för rösträtt.. (Our Rightful Place. About women's struggle for suffrage) Förlag Bonnier. {{ISBN|978-91-7424-119-8}} (Swedish)</ref> In 1906 the suggestion of women's suffrage was voted down in parliament again.<ref name="runeberg.org">{{cite web|url=https://runeberg.org/nfbo/0225.html |title=Runeberg.org |publisher=Runeberg.org |access-date=January 8, 2011}}</ref> In 1909, the right to vote in municipal elections were extended to also include married women.<ref name="Nordisk familjebok">Nordisk familjebok / Uggleupplagan. 15. Kromat – Ledvätska.</ref> The same year, women were granted eligibility for election to municipal councils,<ref name="Nordisk familjebok"/> and in the following 1910–11 municipal elections, forty women were elected to different municipal councils,<ref name="runeberg.org"/> [[Gertrud Månsson]] being the first. In 1914 [[Emilia Broomé]] became the first woman in the legislative assembly.<ref>[http://www.ub.gu.se/kvinn/portaler/fred/biografier/broome.xml Article] about [[Emilia Broomé]] on the webpage of [[Gothenburg University Library]].</ref>

The right to vote in national elections was not returned to women until 1919, and was practiced again in the election of 1921, for the first time in 150 years.<ref name="Karlsson-Sjögren 1866"/>

After the 1921 election, the first women were elected to Swedish Parliament after women's suffrage were [[Kerstin Hesselgren]] in the Upper chamber and [[Nelly Thüring]] (Social Democrat), [[Agda Östlund]] (Social Democrat) [[Elisabeth Tamm]] (liberal) and [[Bertha Wellin]] (Conservative) in the Lower chamber. [[Karin Kock-Lindberg]] became the first female government minister, and in 1958, [[Ulla Lindström]] became the first acting prime minister.<ref>(Swedish) Mikael Sjögren, Statsrådet och genusordningen – Ulla Lindström 1954–1966 (Minister and Gender – Ulla Lindström 1954–1966).</ref>