Reply: Case Studies Enough for a General Model?

Abstract

Louise Tilly's contribution to our understanding of the long-run develop ment of women's political and social rights is to be welcomed. It is almost two decades since the publication of the first substantive analysis of the development of women's emancipation movements, and many of the later surveys of recent literature are often more descriptive than analytical.1 At the same time, the process by which women have achieved citizenship, particularly within a European context, has been characterized by signifi cant national differences and temporal discontinuities. Finland was the first country to enfranchise women in 1907, although they had been allowed to participate in local elections in Norway from 1902 onward. But women only gained the vote in Switzerland in 1972 and in Liechtenstein they had to wait until 1986 to achieve this objective. The gap between the initial development of women's lobby groups and the final achievement of politi cal enfranchisement was considerable in some cases: The first feminist congress was held in France in 1878, but women were only given the vote there in 1944 at the time of Liberation.2 Despite significant achievements in the postwar period in citizenship entitlements and antidiscrimination legislation, sex-based differences in earnings, labor force participation, and both vertical and horizontal segregation are still evident, to varying de grees, in individual European states. Although the position of women in most European countries has been influenced generally by similar socio economic trends, whether in relation to overall fertility, divorce and illegiti mate birth rates, or the increase in female labor force participation, their treatment in national welfare regimes remains markedly different. Mater nity rights, the extent of public provision of child-care facilities, and the overall material standing of women over their life course continue to vary significantly in a manner that is not simply a function of differential nation al economic performance.3 By focusing on four countries?Britain, France, Germany, and the United States?Tilly is able to move beyond the basic descriptive para digms that have often been employed by earlier authors in analyzing the process by which female suffrage and citizenship entitlements were achieved. Few commentators would dispute the main conclusion that the timing of political enfranchisement was not primarily a function of the strength and efficacy of the women's movement, but more a reflection of historical and ideological factors, political and conjunctural conditions, and the impact of legal and institutional constraints at the level of the nation