8 - Modernization, Emancipation, Mobilization

Summary

Elections and mass politics are features of a modern polity, even where that polity may also retain characteristics of a more archaic political form. Imperial Germany was such a hybrid, with universal manhood [sic] suffrage uneasily in tandem with authoritarian monarchical government. The exclusion of women from national political life before 1919 reflected the backward-looking cast of mind of the ruling elites, which was well illustrated in the patriarchal family law provisions of the new all-German civil code of 1900. Yet by that time, the forces of social and political change consequent on far-reaching economic and technological development, especially from the 1870s, included features that would radically alter women's role - actual and perceived - and would remove some of the practical disabilities that had, since time immemorial, been used to justify the relegation of women to subject status, subordinate to a husband or a male relative. Above all, increasing control of their own fertility permitted women to respond to new opportunities. As women became better able to compete with men, however, particularly in the employment market, artificial restraints were increasingly demanded and sometimes imposed to protect the privileged position of men in society, especially in economic and professional life.