Where Is Poland? | Suffragists

Chapter 6

Suffragists

Polish women fought for independence and for their own rights. Thepioneersofemancipation were working to pave the way for future generations as early as the 1840s, but thewomen’smovement became especially dynamic at the turn of the 20th century.

Cover for the early ‘feminist’ almanach Pierwiosnek (Primrose), the first Polish publication edited by women only, 1842. Photo: Polona.pl

The Enthusiasts: Poland’s first feminists

The first informal Polish feminist group, active between the 1830s and 1850s, was known as the Enthusiasts. They worked to improve women’s participation in public life and promoted self-realisation among women, in particular through education and economic independence. The leader Narcyza Żmichowska had said:

Learn, if you can; know how, if you are able; think about being self-sufficient, because when the need comes no one will be waiting to care for you and support you.

They were widely regarded as provocateurs because they engaged in activities which were previously the exclusive domain of men, such as horse riding and cigar smoking. The Enthusiasts had their own magazine – the first Polish journal which exclusively published women’s writing. Members included the author Narcyza Żmichowska, Poland’s first woman philosopher Eleonora Ziemięcka and Bibiana Moraczewska, author, social and independence activist and audacious conspirator.

For them, the emancipation of Poland was inseparably linked with women’s emancipation, leading many of them to join underground circles.

The group’s activities were based around Żmichowska’s ideas notion of ‘sisterly bonds’ (posiestrzenie) – affirming romantic friendships between women, envisioned in counterbalance to loveless arranged marriages, which essentially amounted to financial contracts between two families.

Jubilee of Paulina Reinszmit-Kuczalska with delegates from around the country, 1911. Photo: Marjan Fuks/Forum

Steering towards women's rights

The women's movement gained momentum at the turn of the century. One of the main organisers of the new wave of feminism was Paulina Kuczalska-Reinschmit. Called the 'hetmaness' or ‘helms-woman’ of the movement, she was the founder of the Union of Women in Warsaw in 1889 and a feminist magazine Ster [The Rudder] in 1895. As a platform for the Polish emancipation movement, Ster provided a way for activists scattered across the three partitions to exchange information.

Uniting the women from all three partitions was also the goal of the Polish Women's Conventions, during which political strategies were debated and determined. The year 1905 saw two important gatherings of this sort. At the first, held in Warsaw, the participants issued a memorandum requesting the right to vote and stand for election for women living in the Kingdom of Poland. At the second convention in Kraków, in turn, Polish feminists met openly for the first time, at their first public and legal gathering. These meetings played a major role in the networking of the activists – the conventions brought together not only representatives of cities and towns from all corners of Poland, but also emigrants from Paris, Stockholm, Berlin, and Moscow. In 1907, the Union for the Equal Rights of Polish Women – the first official nationwide feminist organization – was established.

On 8 March 1911, the International Women's Day was celebrated for the first time in Kraków and several other Galician cities. In Kraków, the activists organised a demonstration of several thousand people in favour of women's suffrage. They succeeded in 1912, when women were allowed to vote in city council elections. However, this right was limited by requirements of age, residence, property and education.

Before World War I, activists started to protest against the strict, conservative code of morality -- these postulates would then become widely present in the feminist discourse in the 1920s and 1930s. The youngest generations of emancipated women, who by then knew well that they had ‘the right to have rights', demanded liberation from existing standards, set by men.