The Achievement of Female Sufffrage in Romania

Abstract

The 1923 constitution included only the promise that women's political and civil rights would soon be improved by a future law that would articulate women's suffrage rights. In the 19th century, ideas about women's political rights developed under the influence of debates on Romania's modernization according to Western standards. Demands for female suffrage were based on women's contribution to progress, a progress that required women's equal involvement in the construction of a new, modern state. The first feminist demands for women's political rights appeared at the end of the 1890s, in the publications supporting one of the earliest Romanian feminist organizations, Liga Femeilor . Romanian women won full political rights only in 1946, and only after a long fight. As with female suffrage, progress in women's political participation is proving slow, and it is usually triggered by political pressures stemming from the need to comply with a particular democratic model. Keywords:constitution; democratic model; female suffrage; feminist; Liga Femeilor ; political rights; Romania