On November 28th, 1918 Polish women received voting rights. The first elections in the newly freed Poland occurred in January 1919.
When women first went to vote in 1919, only 2 percent of them managed to gain seats in the Polish parliament. Today, about 23 percent of MPs and 14 percent of senators are women.
Full citizenships for women was not commonplace or obvious in Europe at that time. Polish women were given voting rights before countries like the USA, UK, France and Switzerland.
Polish women were given voting rights before countries like the USA, UK, France and Switzerland
In terms of voting rights for women, Nobel Laureate George Shaw’s words “Give women voting rights, and in five years they’ll install deadly taxes for bachelors” became famous. In the man’s home country, Ireland, women were allowed to vote in 1928.
In the Second Polish Republic, women were allowed to hold the same public offices as men. The resolutions of the 1918 decree were upheld by the March constitution of 1921. The constitution did not allow to put forward any limitations due to gender and fully repealed the limits on married women having legal and process abilities. 1929 saw the imposition of the rule of equality among both spouses when it came to personal relations.
