German Social Democracy and Women's Suffrage 1891-1918

In the period from 9.40 to 10.25, I visited the bar owned by Kelling, at No. 5 Suderstrasse. There were eleven workers there, sitting at various tables. One of them said the following: 'People are always working towards a state in which women will be given equality with men in public and political life. In my opinion this is wrong, because a woman never has a correct understanding of these kinds of matters. On the contrary, she must always be guided by the man on them, so she can never be made equal to men. Of course there are also women who possess energy and insight, but these are so few that they do not come into consideration. It would be better if people worked towards removing women from public life altogether and occupying them with domestic tasks.' Another worker said: 'There are lots of women who are very well-suited for public life. This can be best observed in the fact that they have forced their way into nearly every trade. Of course, these are only those trades in which excessively hard physical labour is not demanded of them; they will never be able to enter these trades since they lack the necessary physical strength by nature. Still, their number in other jobs is so great that they can be given equality with men, which is indeed merely a measure of justice towards women which they should have enjoyed long ago.' Another said: 'All of us here must support women's equality. The advantage which accrues to us from it is considerably greater than the disadvantage which it brings. If women are given equality with men in political life, our party will double in size at the least. This ground alone would be enough to let all other reservations vanish. Whether or not the women understand politics is all the same to us; the main thing is, the majority of votes which are used at elections and so on is there. It's obvious that the workforce will come out of it better than the rich

Ancient history · Archaeology · Democracy · Economic history · German · Political science · Politics · Suffrage · European history and politics · History · Law

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