Kvinnestemmeretten i Horten og de andre Vestfoldbyene ...

Abstract
In 1913 all Norwegian women acquired the right to vote at political and local elections. Then
they had fought for many years to be recognized as citizens. My dissertation is about
Norwegian women’s labour for suffrage on a local level. My research is related to the five
towns in Vestfold, a small county in the East of Norway. My topic is women’s political
engagement and the newspapers‘depiction of the women’s struggle for the right to vote in
Vestfold between 1890 and 1913.
In my opinion the local newspapers are important sources for understanding the changes in
attitudes that concerns the suffrage for women in a local society. I have chosen 15 annuals
from newspapers covering the five towns in the county of Vestfold from the period 1890 to
1913, because they reflect the most crucial national and local changes that occurred in this
period that influenced the understanding of a woman’s role in society. I believe that by
closely examining the chosen annuals from all the local newspapers in Vestfold from this
period, I get both valid and accurate knowledge about the way in which newspapers present
their information about the women’s suffrage. Besides the material is a great source for
understanding the women’s engagement in their struggle for the right to vote.
I believe that the newspapers were building a public opinion in the local society and were
contributing strongly to the change of understanding and acceptance of the role of the woman
in society. But also by choosing to ignore these changes towards a new role, the newspapers
spread attitudes. To a large extent many of the conservative newspapers chose to be silent
about the women’s movement and the suggestions about giving women the right to vote that
were debated in Norwegian National Assembly – Stortinget. The lack of coverage can be just
as powerful as the choice to include information.
At the end of the 19 th century the old structure in society met a new one. New thoughts about
democracy and about a more liberal publicity created a contrast to the idea of a more limited
democracy and closed and selective publicity. The struggle for political vote for women was a
struggle for citizenship and equality, and as time went by it became a struggle to get the status
of citizenship incorporated for all women so that a common female identity that included all
aspects of the role of the citizen, could develop.
Horten is a small town in the county of Vestfold in the South-Eastern part of Norway. It was
the base of the naval marine in Norway, and it was in many ways a conservative town with all