Vienna (PK) women who were active in the area of political were also treated or overlooked by historical science as a specialty and exception. The themed band “Women as politically acting. Contributions to the Agency in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1780-1918” tries a different access to the political and social commitment of women with the instrument of women and gender research. The volume was presented on Wednesday afternoon as part of the series of events “Parliament and Democracy – yesterday and today”, in which the parliamentary archive and the parliamentary library present new research results. Parliament director Harald Dossi, the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) and Transcript Verlag had invited. Katrin Keller from the parliamentary archive was moderated.
Visibility of politically acting women of the monarchy
Parliament director Harald Dossi said in his opening words that he was happy about the lively interest in the presentation. The parliament is a worthy framework for the presentation of a book that applies a broad concept of “political” on social issues. In its mediation work for children and adolescents, the democracy workshop of the parliament also assumes a policy concept that includes all areas in which different interests meet and negotiate.
Katrin Keller, director of the Institute for the Research of the Habsburg Monarchy and the Balkans of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW), congratulated the volume, which devoted itself to an important question, namely what was considered “historical” and thus worth preserving. This decision is always a political question. The author: On the one hand, the vision of women would have set themselves the goal of the band. The concept of the “agency”, ie the areas of action and opportunities for women at a time when they were structurally excluded from participation in politics, is also central.
The two editors of the volume, Barbara Haider-Wilson and Waltraud Schütz, work at the institute for researching the Habsburg monarchy and the Balkans of the ÖAW. In a brief introduction, they outlined the concern of the twelve contributions of the band, namely to make the wide range of political action of women visible in the late Habsburg monarchy. The anthology does not want to present “heroines”, said Haider-Wilson. Rather, it is about politics as a communication and action space that arises wherever there is power relationships. Schütz pointed out that the source situation was often difficult because the records of women in principle in the 19th century were fundamentally assigned to the area of ”private” and therefore rarely kept.
Women and politics: a history of “negotiations”
The key note for the event under the title “‘You mean it political!’ Gabriella Hauch, emeritated university professor for more recent history and women and gender history at the University of Vienna. It stated that the “bourgeois gender order” of the 19th century was based on a binary gender concept that established itself from the principles of Enlightenment with the civil society.
Even the French Revolution quickly excluded women from the political participation. The subsequent restoration solidified this order into laws. This was particularly effective in family law, which was largely valid until the 20th century. Political participation had become a privilege of men from a nobility privilege in bourgeois society. Hauch noticed that the fact that “male” and “female” in bourgeois society had been treated as “first rank” order categories. Gender difference was used to fix rigid gender roles with clear hierarchies.
With the revolutionary year 1848, women would again have entered the political stage. Subsequently, however, they were excluded from membership in political associations. The once raised demand for the emancipation of women was no longer disappearing. The bourgeois-liberal women’s movement has been committed to education to achieve the participation of women in public life. It is characteristic that the advocates of women’s education avoided political arguments and, above all, the “expediency” of the women’s degree would have used women as a central argument, while their opponents mainly brought biological arguments into the meeting. How the quote “You mean it political!” by Karl Kraus, the far -reaching consequences of the demand for women’s education were understood very well.
It was important to emphasize that women and gender research did not want to write sacrificial history, but a story of negotiations and the actors who wore them. “These negotiations go further today,” said Hauch. (Conclusion) Sox
A NOTICE: Photos From this event as well as a Reference to past events Find im Parliament web portal.