‘We Were Done the Moment We Gave Women the Vote’: The Female Franchise Factor and the Munich By-elections, 1938–1939

  • Julie V. Gottlieb
Chapter

Abstract

From the immediate post-war and post-enfranchisement years to the outbreak of the Second World War two issues preoccupied press, politicians and public. The first was how the universal franchise — particularly the women’s vote — would redraw the political landscape and alter the nature of politics. Already in 1918 Lord Esher set a fretful tone by foreseeing that ‘an avalanche of women has been hurled into the political chaos. Institutions as well as ideas will have to be re-sorted’.1 The second area of deep uncertainty was the reconstruction of the international order after the rupture and annihilation of the Great War. The mass electorate’s imagination was captured by the recasting of international relations, the expectancy placed on the League of Nations, the menace of extremist alternatives at home and abroad, and myriad campaigns promising the path to world peace.2 The scholarship on each of these themes is vast and varied but, ultimately, quite discrete, tending not to recognise how intimately the two issues were, in fact, overlapping and intrinsic. Indeed, one of the main objections to women’s enfranchisement was on the grounds that as a sex they were not suited to decide foreign and imperial affairs. This attitude persisted even after the war, and was well illustrated, for instance, by the state’s reluctance to remove the bar to women joining the diplomatic service.

Keywords

Public Opinion Foreign Policy Foreign Affair Recent Crisis Woman Candidate 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Notes

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© Julie V. Gottlieb 2013

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  • Julie V. Gottlieb

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