Petitioning and the Mass Mobilization of Women

• In Event: Collective Action, Conflict, and Political Change from a Historical Perspective

Abstract

How did women use petitions to mobilize politically during the period of limited suffrage? In this paper, I analyze an original data set containing 279,898 petition signatures from Norwegian women in 1905. The signatures were collected to make up for women’s exclusion from the official referendum on independence from Sweden. I calculate the share of adult women who signed the petition in each of the 633 municipalities and then use an instrumental variable strategy to investigate the factors that allowed women to organize and effectively take collective action—including urban networks, personal income and employment, and low levels of wealth inequality. In addition, I explore how the collective action subsequently paved the way for women’s electoral participation and entrance into municipal councils. The study will thus show how the mass mobilization of women was achieved, and its consequences for women’s political participation.

Author

• Oyvind Skorge, Harvard