The Danish Suffragettes’ International Engagement (1888-1919)

The context for the Danish struggle for enfranchisement was primarily local and national. There are reasons to move beyond the “national container” of Denmark in the time period of 1888-1919 and analyze the international inspiration for the Danish women’s organizations and the universal enfranchisement in 1915. The primary sources bear witness to Krista Cowman’s observation of women’s international organizations in Britain and North America and “how a sense of commonalities between women of different nationalities encouraged transnational transferences of methodologies and ideas between the women’s movements in different countries in the 19th and 20th centuries” (Cowman w.y.). And to Leila J. Rupp’s (1997) conclusion that “personalized politics”, women’s interactions and international participation contributed to the internationalist project in the beginning of the 20th century. A body of research covers women and women’s organizations’ international work with a strong focus on the European and North American suffragettes. However, there is very little systematic knowledge about this international perspective in Danish and Nordic research making the historical-empirical analysis a key purpose of this article. Bearing the above in mind, we ask what the Danish women’s organizations learned from their engagement in international organizations? We understand ‘learn’ in a broad sense including both concrete, ‘material’ learning such as a media strategy adopted from the British suffragettes and inspiration by the good example of obtained enfranchisement in other countries to social capital and networks. The article emphasizes both an analysis and discussion of the potential learning based on primary sources and our perspective is both on feminist and pacifist engagement in the time frame