Women’s Day Hungary
Women’s Right to Vote in Hungary
November 25, 1918 – limited suffrage
1945 – full suffrage
Number of female heads of state to date: 0
Women attained limited suffrage in 1918 (voting for the first time in 1922); and full suffrage in 1945, but as in other communist states, civil rights of both men and women were symbolic, as the system was an authoritarian one.
> The Debate on Parliamentary Reforms in Women’s suffrage in Hungary 1908-1918
Women’s Rights in Hungary Call for Improvement
Jul 11, 2021 – In May 2020, the Hungarian government denied ratification of a treaty known as the Council of Europe Convention on Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence, or “the Istanbul Convention”. This treaty would protect women’s rights in Hungary. The Istanbul Convention is an international treaty that prevents and combats violence against women. The Hungarian government refused to ratify the treaty because it is afraid that it will encourage illegal migration and homosexuality. At the same time, the Hungarian government stated that women’s rights in Hungary are already protected despite arguments to the contrary from women’s rights groups.
> borgenmagazine.com/womens-rights-in-hungary
Women in politics: Hungary is lagging far behind
Aug 3, 2020 – The issue of women’s suffrage was first raised in Hungary after the Compromise. In 1871, Pál Madocsányi, the spokesman for the Liberal Party, submitted a petition to the National Assembly of Hungary, but his request was met with general hilarity. By the turn of the century, however, women’s rights had already begun to be realised in Hungary. From 1895, for example, some university faculties were open to women, and women’s associations were being constantly formed. The fight for women’s suffrage was led by the Social Democratic Party and the Feminist Association, founded in 1904. One of the most prominent leaders of the latter organisation was journalist Rózsa Bédy-Schwimmer, who founded the magazine called Woman and the Society, which reported on women’s rights issues and events and helped organise the work and membership of the association. The newspaper carried out a major survey of politicians, lawyers, and other public figures to support women’s suffrage.
> dailynewshungary.com/hungary-is-far-behind-europe-in-the-number-of-women-in-politics/
Women’s Rights and the Legacy of Communism in Hungary
by Borbála Juhász, president of the Hungarian Women’s Lobby
It’s an interesting time to be a woman in Hungary. As we approach the 60th anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian people’s uprising against the Soviet-installed communist state, there is hardly a woe—or perceived woe—to be found that the government hasn’t drawn women into somehow.
There’s the blame narrative: Hungarian women aren’t having enough children to reverse the declining birth rate; Roma women are having too many children, threatening Hungary’s ethnic bloodlines. And there’s the victim narrative: In the lead up to the recent referendum on refugees, migrants were presented as dangerous rapists and polygamists.
Under communism, Hungarian women were exploited for political and economic purposes as well. Although some Western scholars have described the socialist state’s approach to women as “state feminism,” this is a misinterpretation. Feminism was a “bourgeois” movement, and therefore had no legitimacy in a system that had the “dictatorship of the proletariat” as a model. In fact, communist leaders banned all feminist organizations in 1949, creating one large, communist party led organization—the Democratic Women’s Alliance—instead. Independent feminist voices were silenced.
Equality between women and men in the communist-era workplace was less a result of a progressive state ideology than a logical outcome of a productivist economic model: women were required by law to be employed, so they were employed. The stereotypical poster image of the woman tractor driver was mostly state propaganda, a forcibly imposed public representation of the “emancipated” woman working on a collective farm. It became a cliché of socialist imagery but wasn’t truly a tribute to women. And while women were promoted in the workplace and in some decision making bodies – notably never in the decisive one, the Politburo – they remained “domestic slaves” at home and violence against women was never discussed.
› visegradinsight.eu/womens-rights-and-the-legacy-of-communism-in-hungary/
Facts and figures
Leadership and political participation – [UN Women]
IPU-UN Women in politics map – [IPU]