ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the rise of the welfare state around 1900, a period in which the opportunities for political participation by women changed in fundamental respects. It argues that apart from the institutional context and provides an analysis of participation to the political beliefs and strategies of organisations and movements. A contextual and historical analysis of women’s participation needs to take account both of institutions and of ideas. With the rise of the first welfare states, women’s social participation in community associations and voluntary organisations took on a new political meaning. Probably the most important issues of social policy to occupy women’s organisations before the Second World War were ‘endowment of motherhood’ and family allowances. As far as women’s organisations were able to develop initiatives, they did so merely in opposition to the prevailing policy of family allowances. The suffrage issue fared a little better in terms of co-operation between the Social Democratic societies and feminist organisations.
