In November 1918, German women gained the right to vote, and female
suffrage would forever change the landscape of German political
life. Women now constituted the majority of voters, and political
parties were forced to address them as political actors for the
first time.
Analyzing written and visual propaganda aimed at, and frequently
produced by, women across the political spectrum--including the
Communists and Social Democrats; liberal, Catholic, and
conservative parties; and the Nazis--Julia Sneeringer shows how
various groups struggled to reconcile traditional assumptions about
women's interests with the changing face of the family and female
economic activity. Through propaganda, political parties addressed
themes such as motherhood, fashion, religion, and abortion. But as
Sneeringer demonstrates, their efforts to win women's votes by
emphasizing "women's issues" had only limited success.
The debates about women in propaganda were symptomatic of larger
anxieties that gripped Germany during this era of unrest,
Sneeringer says. Though Weimar political culture was ahead of its
time in forcing even the enemies of women's rights to concede a
public role for women, this horizon of possibility narrowed sharply
in the face of political instability, economic crises, and the
growing specter of fascism.