At the IHR Parliaments, Politics and People seminar on Tuesday 3 November, Dr Paula Bartley, of the University of Warwick, will be discussing her new book, Trailblazers: the First Women Elected to Government.
The seminar takes place on 3 November 2026, between 5:30 and 6:30 p.m. It is fully ‘hybrid’, which means you can attend either in-person in London at the IHR, or online via Zoom. Details of how to join the discussion are available here.
Does it surprise you that the first woman ever to be elected to any parliament in the world was a lesbian, vegetarian feminist? Does it astound you that a feminist nun was the first woman to be elected in one country? Does it astonish you that a song in the Eurovision song contest started a revolution that led to the election of women?
These are just three women who were the first to trailblaze their way into a privileged previously male only space: electoral representation. There are many many others from across the globe.
In my view the 20th century was the age of democracy. It was when democracy was increasingly established as a system of government across the world. In 1901 politics was a man’s world. Throughout Europe, Kings, Sultans, Grand Dukes and Princes ruled their countries. The image below, although taken in 1910, gives an impression of this male power. It shows nine European rulers. Not a woman in sight.
There were no women in governments elsewhere either. Into this seemingly calm and ordered life burst a political firestorm.
This was when that lesbian vegetarian feminist stepped into the male-dominated world of parliamentary representation. The country was Finland. Her name was Hilda Käkikoski. She is pictured below.
Käkikoski’s entrance into Finnish politics was all a bit of a surprise. At the time Finland was part of the Russian Empire. In 1905, a revolution in Russia, an unsuccessful war with Japan and unrest in Finland forced Tsar Nicholas II to concede power. Finland was granted home rule. The country took a radical route. In 1906, all adults over the age of twenty-three were given the right to vote and the right to stand for election.
In 1907 Finland elected nineteen women to its parliament, the Eduskunta, pictured below. It was the world’s first fully democratic parliament.
One of the nineteen, Käkikoski was an unusual politician. She was a vegetarian, a lesbian, a feminist and a suffrage activist. Paradoxically, she stood as a candidate for the Old Finnish Party, Finland’s conservative party.
Käkikoski’s time in the Eduskunta was short-lived: she retired ahead of the 1910 election because of poor health. Finnish parliamentary independence was equally fleeting. Tsar Nicholas II shut down its parliament. However, Käkikoski’s election sparked a chain reaction that would ignite across the world.
By 2000, over 95% of countries had elected women to their parliaments or appointed women to government. How did this happen?
It was not inevitable. There was no unbroken straight line of progress. The arc of history did not always bend towards justice. The twentieth century was marked by seismic change – revolutions, two World Wars, the decolonisation of Africa and Asia and the formation and sudden collapse of the USSR. Women all over the world, at different times, in different countries and in different circumstances, took advantage of the power vacuums created by these upheavals and demanded their rights to participate in governing bodies. In doing so they reshaped global politics.
Take war and revolution. While war during the twentieth century was devastating to human life, it was also a force for democratic change. The First World War was a war that led to the collapse of the old regimes of the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, German and Russian Empires and reshaped the geopolitical landscape of Europe. In 1918 newly independent Hungary declared universal suffrage and allowed women to stand for Parliament.
The first – and only – Hungarian woman to be elected was Margit Schlacta (pictured above), a feminist Catholic nun. Schlacta was brave. In the 1930s, Jewish Hungarians began to have their legal rights removed and their possessions confiscated. They were relocated to substandard houses, beaten up and murdered by their fellow citizens.
From the outset, Schlacta was an open critic of antisemitism, seeing it as a direct contradiction of Christian beliefs. She forged baptismal certificates and identity papers for Jewish people under threat, sent food to the ghettos and sheltered people in her convents. She was tortured, imprisoned and only narrowly escaped the death penalty. Under Schlacta’s guidance her order rescued more than 2,000 Hungarian Jews.
Revolutions also created opportunities for women. One of my favourite stories involves a last-placed European song and the independence of Mozambique.
In 1974 ABBA won the Eurovision song contest with Waterloo, a song which launched their career. Portugal came last, with E depois do adeus performed by Paulo de Carvalho. Yet the Portuguese song was much more significant. It started a revolution. When the song was played on 24 April 1974 on Portuguese radio it became a siren call for the army to challenge the dictator.
Within 24 hours the Portuguese dictatorship had fallen, democracy was installed and its colonial empire dismantled. ABBA’s win may have propelled them into stardom but E depois do adeus changed the course of modern European and African history.
On 25 June 1975, after centuries of Portuguese colonial rule, the southeast African country of Mozambique, gained its independence. In 1977 the first general election was held, and 27 women were elected. One of them was Graça Machel (1945-to date), who was appointed Mozambique’s first Education Minister and has subsequently established herself as one of the world’s leading politicians.
Understanding the history of trailblazing women in the 20th century seems particularly important at a time when the rights of women and minority groups continue to face challenges across the globe.
PB
The seminar takes place on 3 November 2026, between 5:30 and 6:30 p.m. It is fully ‘hybrid’, which means you can attend either in-person in London at the IHR, or online via Zoom. Details of how to join the discussion are available here.
