The first “female deputy” in the Bohemian State Diet of 1912

Abstract

This study analyses the preparation and unfolding of the first successful election campaign for a woman to be a member of a representative assembly in the Habsburg Monarchy. The vote in question took place in Bohemia during a by-election to the Bohemian State Diet in June 1912, when the writer Božena Viková-Kunětická was elected with the support of the middle-class Czech parties and the Social Democratic Party. Even though the election represen- ted a major milestone on the way to woman’s emancipation and the demo- cratisation of suffrage, Viková-Kunětická was in practice the very opposite, if not the adversary, of the West European feminists and suffragists of the time. She was considered to be a Czech nationalist and a defender of maternity, family, marriage and the traditional position of a woman. As this study makes clear, her election did not constitute the manifestation of the constituents’ free will and desire for democracy, but represented much more the imposition of party political objectives, which met with massive resistance among the mostly male electorate. This opposition, as well as the rejection of the by- election’s validity by the governor of Bohemia, nevertheless cannot detract from the symbolic importance of the first election of a female deputy, given that Božena Viková-Kunětická became the first woman elected to a provin- cial or state representative assembly in Europe.