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The Nordic countries do not just identify strongly with gender equality: they also increasingly mobilize their pasts, as well as more contemporary notions held at the international level wherein the Nordics are seen as exceptionally gender equal, to highlight and brand themselves in the present as global pioneers of women's rights. In this article, using nation-branding as an overarching perspective, we examine how this eagerness among the Nordics to be perceived as front-runners of gender rights affected the memory politics at play during the national commemoration of 100 years of women's suffrage in Finland (2006–2007), Norway (2013) and Sweden (2018–2022). In addition, we ask what national narratives the respective jubilee celebrations helped to facilitate – and whether those narratives correspond with the images that function as the primary brands of Finland, Norway and Sweden today.

The nineteenth century, a time of far-reaching cultural, political, and socio-economic transformation in Europe, brought about fundamental changes in the role of women. Women achieved this by fighting for their rights in the legal, economic, and political spheres. In the various parts of Europe, this process went forward at a different pace and followed different patterns. Most historical research up to now has ignored this diversity, preferring to focus on women's emancipation movements in major western European countries such as Britain and France. The present volume provides a broader context to the movement by including countries both large and small from all regions of Europe. Fourteen historians, all of them specialists in women's history, examine the origins and development of women's emancipation movements in their respective areas of expertise. By exploring the cultural and political diversity of nineteenth-century Europe and at the same time pointing out connections to questions explored by conventional scholarship, the essays shed new light on common developments and problems

Im Zeitraum 2017 bis 2021 wurde dem hundertjährigen Bestehen des Frauenwahlrechts in mehr oder weniger breit gefächerter Form gedacht. Die wechselvolle Geschichte dieses Erinnerns sowohl seitens Aktivist*innen der Frauenbewegungen und Historiker*innen als auch seitens staatlicher Institutionen oder politischer Parteien wird hier am Beispiel ausgewählter europäischer Länder veranschaulicht. Die Beiträge zeigen, wie sehr fehlende Quellen, aber auch Stereotypen und Vorurteile Herausforderungen für ebendieses Erinnern bedeuteten. Zudem reflektieren sie das Spannungsverhältnis zwischen den unterschiedlichen Interessen der am Gedenken Mitwirkenden. Das Jubiläum hat nicht nur den Grundstein für eine Integration der Einführung des Frauenwahlrechts in die nationale politische Geschichte gelegt, sondern auch dazu beigetragen, das gesamte Thema aus neuen Perspektiven zu betrachten. Aus dem Inhalt: Die Erinnerung an das Frauenwahlrecht in Großbritannien und Irland / 100 Jahre Frauenwahlrechtsjubiläum in Deutschland / An Inside Reflection on the Dutch Centenary of Universal (Women's) Suffrage / Memory Work, Memory Politics and the Centennial of Women's Suffrage in Sweden / Frauenwahlrechtsjubiläen in zwei Nachfolgestaaten der Habsburgermonarchie / Ellen Carol DuBois interviewed by Mineke Bosch – Woman Suffrage in Times of Distress / Leben im Versteck. Annäherung an die Geschichte von Kindern ausländischer Arbeiter*innen in der Schweiz der Hochkonjunktur / Die antifeministischen Geschlechterpolitiken der FPÖ Commemorations are currently remembering the centennial of women's suffrage in several European countries and the United States. While, on the surface, early historiography of the history of women's suffrage has opened the way for the discipline of women's and gender history since the 1970s, several concerns, such as the collection and preservation of suffrage heritage, stereotypes and prejudices, and political contextualization, have challenged ways and possibilities both to write this history and to remember women's equal inclusion in political participation. This issue seeks to explore the politics of suffrage memory, addressing both the historiography of women's suffrage and its impact on the commemoration of women's enfranchisement, especially also in relation to national celebrations of universal suffrage.