Saga - 2014, Page 34

obtaining the right both to vote and stand as candidates to the Althing in 1915, the
first to take a seat there, campaigning in a women’s list seven years later, was
Ingibjörg H. Bjarnason. once this milestone was achieved, however, history tells
us that the next effort to organise a women’s list failed, so that for around four
decades, women attained very few representatives in the Althing and became
practically absent in Icelandic political history. The same applies to municipal pol-
itics: after their initial success, few women are mentioned in Icelandic political his-
tory until the Red Stockings Movement (Rauðsokkahreyfingin), the Women’s List
(Kvennaframboð) and Women’s Alliance (Kvennalisti) arose during the 1970s and
1980s.
This article, however, illustrates a way to unearth greater female components
in Iceland’s political evolution, by means of a different perspective than putting
the women’s movement and the struggle for women’s rights in the foreground,
which women’s and gender history has hitherto emphasised. The suggested
approach calls for switching the focus of political history from formal authority
to a wider sense of politics, directing attention towards grassroot activities, public
discourse and the political struggle for social change, as well as towards power
relationships and confrontations at levels other than the upper layer of politics.
While this may not be a revolutionary proposal, the situation is such that the aca-
demic handling of Icelandic political movements has so far barely touched on
these areas. Historians have had a difficult time freeing themselves from the urge
to fill in gaps in the history of formal politics and have therefore continued to con-
centrate on the mostly male politicians who were in the limelight, portraying their
achievements and misdeeds, and their relations with leading foreign males. Those
historians who have adopted a different approach to history writing have not
contributed directly to writing political history. Among these are experts in
women’s and gender history who have more or less ignored the history of
political parties thus leaving a gap in the political history of women. While
studies of women’s history and gender relationships have to some extent intro-
duced female pioneers into the political analysis, this addition has been restricted
to the women with tangible influence and power — the parliamentarians, minis-
ters, members of the Red Stockings movement and the women’s lists. In other
words, they were only added to the picture on the basis of traditional political
viewpoints.
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