Abstract
Around the turn of the last century the suffrage was a crucial political issue in Europe and North America. Granting the disenfranchised groups, all women and a proportion of men, the suffrage would foreseeably have lasting effects on the structure of society and its gendered organization. Accordingly, the suffrage was hotly debated. Absent in this debate were the voices of disenfranchised men and this article asks why this was so. No research has been found on why these men did not fight for their suffrage while women ́s fight for their suffrage has been well researched. Within this context, the article examines the case of Iceland, in terms of issues such as the importance of urbanization, social change and culturally defined perceptions of men and women as social persons. It is argued that men did not have the same impetus as women to fight for their suffrage, and that if they had wanted to they were in certain respects disadvantaged compared to women. The gendered organization of society emerges as central in explaining why women fought for their suffrage and men did not, and why women’s suffrage received more attention than men’s general suffrage. As a case study, offering a microcosmic view of the subject in one social and cultural context, it allows for comparison with other like studies and with ongoing social processes.
Highlights
In the last decades of the 19th century and well into the 1900s, the suffrage was a passionately debated political issue in Europe and North America
It is hoped that this article contributes to breaking ground in research on the understudied subject of men’s general suffrage and the reasons why women, and not men, campaigned for their suffrage
The examination touches upon basic issues in the social sciences, such as the gendered organization of society, the importance of urbanization, social change and the perception of men and women as social persons
Summary
Men and the Suffrage disenfranchised men the suffrage could foreseeably have lasting effects on the political structure of society, and opinions were divided. Jónasdóttir’s (1991) theory on the social organization of love is brought to bear on the material Can this theoretical perspective further explain if and why men did not have the same motivation as women to fight for their suffrage and why women’s suffrage received more attention than men’s general suffrage? Essentialism repudiates the importance of human agency, not least that of persons to recreate themselves as social actors without regard for, or in opposition to, accepted norms and values Such recreation of social personhood is central to social movements such as women’s campaign for their suffrage (Kristmundsdóttir 1997). Answers to the central questions of the paper are advanced and the centrality of gender laid out
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