Why are so Few Women Elected? Political Party Strategies in Denmark and Sweden During the First Parliamentary Election After Women’s Enfranchisement

The aim of this chapter is to analyse the strategies of the political parties when facing women as potential candidates, arguing that the resistance to women as representatives was fiercer than to women as voters. The analytical focus lies on the nomination and electoral processes in the first parliamentary elections with next to universal suffrage in Denmark (1918) and Sweden (1921), using a combination of unpublished party protocols, newspapers, and contemporary electoral statistics. The findings show that the poor result for women—3% women to the Danish Lower Chamber (Folketinget) and 1.7% women to the Swedish Lower Chamber (Riksdagens andra kammare)—was not primarily due to the voters, but to the political parties, who, supported by the closed electoral ballot structure, were the gatekeepers to elected positions. The major factor explaining this poor outcome was the prerogative of the incumbents, e.g. those MPs (evidently, at this time all males), who had won their seats in previous elections and wanted to stand for re-election.