Gender-equality pioneering, or how three Nordic states celebrated 100 years of women’s suffrage

ABSTRACT

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.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender equality
• commemoration
• nation-branding

Introduction

From the 1990s onwards, there has been a surge in national jubilee celebrations within the Nordic region.¹ Among these events, we find celebrations of the centenary of women’s suffrage. The Nordic wave of commemorating the achievement of women’s enfranchisement began in Finland in 2006 as part of a national celebration of Finland’s parliamentarian reforms of 1906, and continued in Norway in 2013, before Sweden in 2018 embarked on a little more than three-year-long celebration of the political reforms that had led to the introduction of universal and equal suffrage in the country. As memory studies scholars emphasize, national commemoration events are products of certain ways of remembering the past, and such events are often governed and dominated by contemporary political and economic concerns and visions for the future. The purpose of this article, then, is to critically compare how the memories of women’s achievement of the right to vote in the Nordic region have been produced, narrated and used in their respective national contexts with an emphsis on the centenary celebrations of women’s suffrage in Finland, Norway and Sweden.

The relationship between history and memory is never straightforward and takes different forms in different countries. The argument set forth in this article is that, intentionally or not, the various celebrations of the centenary of women’s voting rights in Finland, Norway and Sweden were influenced by parallel gender-related nation-branding activities in which all of the Nordic countries are currently involved.² The Nordic countries do not only 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 as seen as exceptionally gender equal, to highlight and brand themselves in the present as global pioneers of women’s rights.³ Sweden is the most aggressive gender-equality brander of the Nordic states, since 2014 with the ambition to pursue a feminist foreign policy.⁴ In relation to women’s right to vote, however, Sweden was something of a laggard compared to both Finland and Norway. Although a process of parliamentary reforms to regulate political representation in Sweden began in 1918, Swedish women were not enfranchised until 1921. This position as a Nordic latecomer of women’s suffrage challenge the consistent notion of Sweden as progressive pointed at by scholars such as Jenny Andersson and Mary Hilson among others.⁵ The key question examined here, then, is how this eagerness to be perceived as front-runners of gender rights was to affect the memory politics at play in the national commemoration of women’s suffrage of Sweden in comparison with the centenary celebrations of Finland and Norway. Also, we ask, what national narratives did the respective jubilee celebrations help to facilitate – and did these narratives correspond with the images that function as the primary brands of the three countries? If not, how can the gap between memory politics and gender-related nation-branding be understood and explained? To answer these questions, we draw upon various types of sources produced during the centenary celebrations of the three countries examined. Special attention is paid to the involvement of parliaments, ministries, and actors such as feminist organizations and scholars. Different actors are usually involved when historical milestones of national significance are produced, regardless of whether such productions are devoted to esteemed artists and authors or to social and political reforms, such as the achievement of women’s suffrage at the turn of the last century. Within the Nordic context, civil society, historians and other university scholars, museums, media and archives are key actors within national memory production. In addition, there is the state, of course.⁶

The article begins with an introduction to nation-branding and more gender-related forms of nation-branding and reputation management. In the subsequent sections, the national cases are analysed and compared in chronological order – that is, the Finnish celebration of parliamentary reforms (2006–2008), the Norwegian suffrage jubilee (2013) and the jubilee to celebrate the birth of modern democracy in Sweden (2018–2022) are each examined in turn. In the concluding section, we return to the question of how the past is commemorated, produced and used in the era of nation-branding.

Equality, nation-branding and history in the Nordics

As Katarzyna Jezierska and Ann Towns have shown, all of the Nordic states are currently making increasing use of gender equality to enhance their visibility and impact abroad.⁷ This is because branding has become a ‘necessary marker of identification, a language for all nations on a global scale’, to follow Melissa Aronczyk and others.⁸ In addition, there is the global index industry. Since the first gender-equality index was introduced by the United Nations Development Programme in 1995, the Nordics have scored highly on almost every global measurement.⁹ This reinforces the idea that the Nordics are exceptionally gender equal, an image that feeds back to the Nordic countries themselves, where it is treated as a fact. Indeed, Tori Loven Kirkebø, Haldor Byrkjeflot and Malcolm Langford have identified a rapid increase since 2006 in the use of the phrase ‘the world’s most gender-equal country’ (‘verdens mest likestilte’) in Norwegian newspapers.¹⁰ This indicates that the ability of the Nordic countries to perform well on global gender indexes, of which there are now a total of eight, has established a consistent external image of the Nordic region, or Norway, as gender equal. Such external images can easily be appropriated by individual states for branding purposes – for instance, with the aid of professionally trained advisors in the fields of marketing and reputation management.

Nation-branding involves various activities aimed at creating new or reinforcing already existing assumptions, values and identities based on the idea of the nation as a geographical, historical, cultural, political, economic and social entity.¹¹ The primary goal of such a process is to differentiate a country from others on the global scene.¹² Countries engage in nation-branding for different reasons, however, and their motivations may range from a desire to increase the visibility of one’s own country globally, to a desire to attract foreign investors, to a wish to secure a seat at the table with more powerful states.

There are major differences between the Nordic countries in terms of how they relate to and make use of nation-branding programmes.¹³ Whereas the Danish government hired Simon Anholt, an international branding guru, to help rebuild Denmark as a brand after the Mohammed cartoon crises of the early 2000s, Norwegian authorities have been relatively reluctant to commit themselves to an overall nation-branding programme. Around 2000, new strategies for managing the country’s international reputation were introduced, along with some partly new approaches, but the country still does not have an official country website, unlike its Nordic neighbours.¹⁴ There is still a clear tendency within Norway to focus on the country’s international commitments in the field of gender rights and equality in its efforts to promote itself abroad. On the Norwegian government’s website, for example, it is stated that the country has a ‘long tradition of working for women’s rights and gender equality’ and that Norway ratified the UN’s Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women relatively early on, even if it was not the first country to do so¹⁵:

The UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 18 December 1979, entered into force on 3 September 1981 and has been ratified by 189 states. Norway ratified the convention on 21 May 1981.¹⁶

Sweden has without question the most well-developed brand of the Nordic countries. One key reason for this is the existence since 1945 of the Swedish Institute, a public institution promoting ‘interest and trust in Sweden around the world’.¹⁷ In addition, Sweden has had a platform for managing its foreign image since 1995. In 2007, as part of efforts to create a more coherent brand platform, the website Sweden.se was set up. Here, it is declared that Sweden is associated with progressiveness, innovation, care and authenticity.¹⁸ Since 2014, Sweden has also marketed itself as a country with a feminist foreign policy. However, few historical milestones are mentioned on Sweden.se, which makes for an interesting contrast with the cases of the other two Nordic countries discussed in this article, as we will see below. Perhaps Sweden does not see a need to put its own historical record on display since Sweden’s identity and brand as a politically progressive society is already so well established? According to scholars such as Klaus Petersen and Carl Marklund, the image of Sweden as progressive is a product of longstanding nurture and work by Swedish policymakers and public institutions, along with foreign discourse and perceptions on the country.¹⁹ The picture painted on the web today is that Sweden makes history by being at the forefront of gender equality, ahead of others: ‘In October 2014, Sweden became the first country in the world to launch a feminist foreign policy. This means applying a systematic gender equality perspective throughout the whole foreign policy agenda’.²⁰

No institutions similar to the Swedish Institute exist in the two other Nordic countries examined here. Finland’s cultural institutes, for example, whose purpose is to represent the country’s cultural and academic interests, are not state-funded bodies but instead organized as non-profit organizations. They have therefore engaged only to a limited extent in efforts to create a coherent image of Finland abroad. In 2007, however, while the centenary celebrations of the country’s parliamentary reforms were taking place, the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in cooperation with the Finnish Tourist Board, launched a report entitled Mission for Finland.²¹ In this document, Simon Anholt, the nation-branding consultant that had previously assisted Denmark and Sweden, helped to present the idea that the country needed a more comprehensive branding effort. This led to the relaunch in 2009 of the tourist webpage Finland.fi under the title ThisisFINLAND.²² Subsequently, following a change of government in 2011, the involvement of the private sector increased through the creation of a ‘Team Finland’ network. Steered by the prime minister, with stakeholders from the Ministry of Employment, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Ministry of Education and Culture, this network later merged with the Finland Promotion Board, which owns the Finland.fi webpage that is maintained by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Although gender equality does not have a prominent place on this website today, the website does state that Finland is a gender-equality pioneer because it was the first country in the world to introduce women’s suffrage.²³ What we wish to probe more deeply into here, though, is whether – and, if so, how – the various commemorations of women’s suffrage helped the Nordic states to differentiate themselves from each other, since differentiation is the core aim of branding, or whether all three countries simply evoked different aspects of their pasts to portray themselves as pioneers of gender equality?

Identifying specific national memory programmes or strategies is a difficult task. Longstanding traditions of nationalism and nation-building continue to affect how the nation-state is identified and imagined within the Nordic region today.²⁴ Constructed during the 19th and early 20th centuries, historical narratives often envision Sweden and Denmark as the old monarchs of the region, while Norway has been and continues to be viewed as the state that fought for full independence from Sweden, which it eventually achieved in 1905. Finland, for its part, continues to be portrayed as the relatively young nation that had the establishment of an independent state as its goal from the turn of the century. Throughout the 20th century, however, the notion of ‘society’ has increasingly come to replace that of the ‘nation’ within the national discourses of some Nordic countries. This has been a strong tendency in Sweden and Denmark from the interwar period onwards, for example. For Norway, and to some extent Finland, however, the nation-state has continued to be at the centre of political discussions, and thus also of historical scholarship and commemorations.²⁵ The differences between the various countries on this point were manifest during the celebrations of the centenaries of women’s enfranchisement. Unlike the Norwegian and, to some extent, Finnish celebrations, the Swedish jubilee was not primarily an event dedicated to commemorating 100 years of women’s suffrage. Rather, in Sweden, the celebration of the achievement of women’s right to vote was integrated into a much wider celebration of what was rapidly labelled a jubilee for modern democracy. Within this larger celebration, the issue of women’s citizenship (either in the past or in the present) would receive little attention, and gender scholars would play no official role.²⁶ The celebration still produced an image of Sweden as progressive and thus different from its Nordic neighbours.

‘Finland First’: celebrating women’s agency (2006–2007)

Being the first of the Nordics to grant women the right to vote (in 1906), Finland did not just start the ball rolling in 2006 for celebrations of women’s suffrage throughout the Nordic region: Finnish authorities and branding platforms have also made use of the symbolic opportunities offered by the fact that Finland was the first country in Europe to have enfranchised women. For example, under the headline ‘Finland Is a Gender Equality Pioneer’, it is declared on the tourism website Finland.fi that ‘Finland is one of the world’s leading countries in fostering gender equality. It was the first country to grant women full political rights.’²⁷ Nevertheless, our analysis shows that the centenary of women’s suffrage was from the start taken very seriously in Finland, with a vast range of events being planned and organized centrally by state actors. The committee in charge of planning these events was created by the Finnish Ministry of Social Affairs and Health in 2004, and Leila Kostiainen, who was valtiosihteeri or ‘secretary of state’, was appointed as chair of the committee. Kostiainen thus acted in the highest position available to a civil servant within a Finnish ministry and was joined on the committee by another member from the same ministry.²⁸ In this way, the centenary was situated within the context of Finland’s official work on gender equality, and the task of suitably commemorating the parliamentary reforms of 1906, as part of which women had been granted the right to vote, was given to a group of social scientists under the leadership of Kostiainien.

For the wider celebration of the reforms of 1906, the theme chosen was ‘The Right to Vote – Trust in Law: One Hundred Years of Finnish Democracy’.²⁹ Thus, the celebration of women’s suffrage would assist in the commemoration of Finland as an early Western democratic society. In a report published in 2005 by the committee in charge of the celebration of the centenary of women’s suffrage, Finland was presented as a country rather than a grand duchy under Russian rule during the period in question:

The year 2006 is the 100th anniversary of universal and equal suffrage in Finland. Finland was the second country in the world to give women suffrage, and the first to give them eligibility to stand for elective office. Finnish women also used their political rights: altogether nineteen women were elected to the first Parliament.³⁰

When the planning of the Finnish centenary celebrations started, in 2004, the official aim was to ‘highlight the meaning of women’s societal and political participation and to develop a deepened understanding of history’.³¹ In addition, emphasis was to be placed on the opportunity to stand for elective office, as the 1906 reforms had given women the ‘keys to political action, an opportunity to participate and engage in decision making on every level and to work for questions important for women’. Hence, the main concept conveyed in the way in which the centenary of women’s suffrage in Finland was communicated was initially that of ‘political rights’ – not that of ‘Finland First’. As a result, the discussion of Finland’s significance for women’s suffrage was far more open and critical than the treatment of the issue that would later be presented on the country’s official website Finland.fi. The official website for the centenary itself, Naisten täydet poliittiset oikeudet 100 vuotta (Eng. ‘Centenary of Women’s Full Political Rights in Finland’; Sw. ‘Fulla politiska rättigheter för kvinnor i 100 år’), addressed the question of whether Finland had been a global forerunner in 1906, although it offered no definitive answer on the matter.³²

The website provided a broader description of the context in which the 1906 reforms had taken place, as well as explanations for how and why Finnish women had received political rights so early. According to the historical interpretations provided, however, the enfranchisement of Finnish women should be seen as part of the struggle against Russification and an 1899 proposal that Finland should be governed by the same laws as the rest of the Russian Empire, which the website states was regarded as a threat to the autonomy of the Finnish state. It is also noted on the website created for the centenary celebration that both women’s organizations and socialist women fought for the reforms, even if the more conservative female activists favoured a more gradual reform process. Socialist women in particular had played an active role in the organization of the main strike of 1905, the website explained, as had some liberal feminists.³³

A plethora of organizations were involved in the preparations for and implementation of the celebration of the centenary of women’s suffrage in Finland, ranging from the Social Democrats to the Swedish People’s Party, along with various feminist organizations.³⁴ SUNS, the formal society for gender research in Finland, was also involved, as well as individual gender scholars from the University of Helsinki and Åbo Akademi University. The official planning committee included only one historian, but several historians contributed and wrote articles on history, equality and citizenship for the official website aanioikeus.fi, which was set up in 2005. This website held descriptions of events leading to the reform, as well as statistics on women’s political participation in Finland over time.³⁵ In the report produced by the planning committee, all publications that were related to the centenary were put on display.³⁶ Among them was a four-volume series entitled ‘Centuries of Finnish Women’ (Suomen naisen vuosisadat), published by Tammi, one of Finland’s leading publishing houses. The series was edited by Kaari Utrio, a historian and author of historical novels. The titles of the individual books in the series were From Maid to Master (Piikasesta maisteriksi), The Builders of Hope (Toivon rakentajat), The Other Side of Art (Taiteen toinen puoli) and The Forerunners (Tiennäyttäjät).³⁷

The most comprehensive work published during Finland’s celebration of 100 years of women’s suffrage was Women in Parliament (Fi. ‘Naiset eduskunnassa’, published in 2006; Sw. ‘Kvinnorna i Riksdagen’, published in 2008.³⁸ Written by professional historians and made available in both Finnish and Swedish, it declare that ‘nowhere had women acted so imposingly in the parliamentarian sphere [as in Finland], and decades would pass until similar things were to happen elsewhere’.³⁹ At the start of the book, however, a more descriptive approach to the subject is adopted, with an account of women’s entry into politics and detailed presentations of the careers of female members of parliament. The emphasis here is on women’s agency and societal participation, and this is used to create a narrative of progress and change. By connecting this to the 1906 political reforms, the authors suggest that the entry of women into parliament was decisive for the later transformation of Finland into a women-friendly society. Such an understanding reflects older notions of the strong Finnish woman that had circulated in earlier historical writings.⁴⁰ Several of the chapters included in the volume focus on the concept of the citizen (in Finnish kansalainen – that is, member of the nation). In this way, women were envisioned as members of the Finnish nation even before they were formally included in the polity, in 1906, and on equal terms with men.

The international volume Suffrage, Gender and Citizenship: International Perspectives on Parliamentary Reform (2009), which originated in a seminar held at the University of Tampere in 2006 ‘to celebrate the centenary’, provided a comparative view on the case of women’s suffrage in Finland.⁴¹ In their introduction, the editors compared Finland with, among others, New Zealand and Australia – nations on the margins of the British Empire and world front-runners in terms of women’s political rights. Within such a perspective, Finland was not the first but the third country in the world to make women political citizens on equal terms with men. The Finnish case was nevertheless exceptional according to the editors, as a rather large number of women entered parliament immediately after receiving the vote. This, they argued, made Finnish women ‘global trailblazers’.⁴² Ultimately, the research-based volume helped to produce a new and more advantageous image of Finland: Finland was first because it was a global trailblazer in terms of providing women with the political power required to transform the country into a women-friendly welfare state. This particular narrative assisted the development of the notion of Finland as the first country to have experienced the transformative force – or blessing – of having women in parliament. The development of this narrative took place at a time when a professional branding programme had been set up to present the country abroad, as part of which process the slogan or brand ‘Finland First’ first originated.

Following the start of Finland’s ‘global turn’ after the country joined the European Union in 1994, Nordic cooperation was played down in Finnish foreign policy. Nor was the Nordic context ever directly evoked during the celebration of the centenary of women’s suffrage in Finland, except in the preface written by Finland’s President Tarja Halonen for a book on women and power in contemporary Finnish society.⁴³ In contrast, however, frequent mention was made of Nordic or Finnish experiences as the committee responsible for the commemoration of women’s enfranchisement in Norway began its work, to which we now turn.

‘Norway – the first sovereign state’: the Norwegian suffrage jubilee (2013)

Since Finland was the first of the Nordic countries to celebrate 100 years of women’s suffrage, the Finnish celebration became a point of reference in the preparations for a similar event in Norway. The planning committee, appointed by the Norwegian government in 2010, even travelled to Helsinki to learn from the Finnish experience. The conclusion drawn afterwards, however, was that the mandate given by the Norwegian red–green coalition government required a more decentralized structure of organization. The criticism of the Finnish undertaking was that it had been too centralistic and elitist.⁴⁴ This was something to avoid, concluded the Norwegian organizers led by Kirsti Kolle Grøndal, who had previously been the first woman to hold the position of speaker of the Norwegian parliament. The committee decided to build upon values argued to be central to Norwegian democracy, such as inclusion and local ownership.⁴⁵

The grand opening of the Norwegian Suffrage Jubilee, on International Woman’s Day 2013, was held in Kristiansand, a town in the south of Norway, with national coverage of the event broadcast on the state television channel, NRK. Additionally, four main regions were established for the implementation of the commemoration, covering the entire country from north to south. This gave the centenary the appearance of a regional affair, organized by the common man and woman.

Evidently, the intended impression was that the 100-year anniversary of women’s suffrage in Norway was very democratic – and thus more Norwegian. That the effort to popularize the centenary involved using the Finnish experience as a contrast is interesting, but not necessarily because it tells us something objective about the Finnish case. Rather, it was a way of displaying the value of anti-elitism, which is a central element within Norway’s historical identity.⁴⁶ In addition, it helped to differentiate Norway from Finland at the same time as the regional dimension illustrated the importance of the centre–periphery dimension in Norwegian policymaking, including in the context of memory politics. The year 1913 has no obvious place in the national memory or identity of Norwegians and cannot be compared, for instance, with the symbolic meaning ascribed to the year 1906 in Finland.

The year 1814 – and not 1913 – is the year that symbolizes the birth of the Norwegian democratic state, whose founding is celebrated each year on 17 May with children singing in public parades and people wearing regional costumes. It was also this historical event the authorities had in mind when in 2009 they decided to celebrate, in 2014, ‘the importance and challenges of democracy in modern society’, 200 years after the creation of the Norwegian constitution.⁴⁷ Generous resources were allocated for that purpose, including NOK 350 million for the restoration of the estate where the constitution had been drafted and signed. In addition, the Research Council of Norway announced a research programme to further the overall aim of the constitutional jubilee – that is, to acquire knowledge on the role of the 1814 constitution in Norway’s subsequent development.

Feminists were the first to criticize the government for excluding, or simply forgetting, women in its eagerness to commemorate the founding law and fathers of Norwegian democracy.⁴⁸ In a public letter addressed to the prime minister and the speaker of the Norwegian parliament, the authorities were slated for not organizing a ‘worthy commemoration of the introduction of democracy in Norway’, and it was argued that 1913 was for women what 1814 was for Norwegian democracy.⁴⁹ Symbolically relating the two years, the feminist organizations responsible for the letter argued that commemorating the breakthrough of democracy in Norway should not just be about celebrating the constitution that had allowed the country to become a rule-of-law state: the state should also celebrate the inclusion of women in parliamentary democracy a hundred years later.

The public letter led to a media storm. Minister of Children and Equality Anniken Huitfeldt responded to the situation by assuring that ‘the centenary for the women’s vote in Norway of course [was] to be celebrated’.⁵⁰ This demonstrates that the Norwegian commemoration of 100 years of women’s suffrage in Norway was regarded as a gender-equality happening, under the responsibility of the Ministry of Children and Equality. The tendency to reduce the centenary of women’s suffrage to a celebration of Norway’s ability to become a gender-equal society was criticized by, among others, late historian Francis Sejersted, who argued that 1913 was ‘a brand year for democracy in Norway’ and not only the victory of gender equality.⁵¹

The financial resources made available for the celebration came from diverse state departments, including the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and a few Norwegian embassies organized local centenary events abroad. The section within the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs responsible for ‘promotion of Norway, its reputation and representation on web’ also helped to finance what was called an ‘International Conference on Women, Power and Politics: The Road to Sustainable Democracy’.⁵² This was the most international happening of the 579 events organized during the suffrage jubilee.⁵³ The conference turned the attention to Norway’s international role and included well-known politicians and human rights activists as key speakers. Among these were Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi; Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, who was at the time the head of UN Women; and Norway’s own Gro Harlem Brundtland, who spoke on contemporary and global challenges related to gender equality and women’s rights.⁵⁴ About 300 participants, mostly Norwegian, attended the conference in Oslo, in addition to unknown numbers online.

In accordance with its mandate, the suffrage jubilee focused mainly on the introduction of universal suffrage for women by commemorating and celebrating this democratic breakthrough locally, regionally, nationally and internationally. The particular events or individuals to be evoked in the celebration had not been specified by the government. The only requirement was that it should pay tribute to 11 June 1913 – that is, the day when the Norwegian parliament enfranchised all adult women independent of annual income and wealth. In so doing, Norway had become the fourth country in the world to grant universal suffrage to all of its adult citizens, with the exception of those receiving any form of public assistance in a period of 12 months before an election. This last stipulation, which formed part of the Norwegian constitution, was first eased in 1919, for both men and women. The commemoration held in 2013, however, evoked the national achievement of woman suffrage and thus the year 1913. The website created for the occasion, www.stemmerett.no, provided information about Norwegian suffragists and female pioneers, along with women’s entry into national politics, which had helped transform Norway into a woman-friendly welfare state. Strikingly, the narratives presented resembled the accounts produced during Finland’s centenary celebration. Such narratives depicted Norway as a front-runner in terms of female suffrage, and thus one of the world’s most gender-progressive countries, by showcasing Norway’s characteristics as a sovereign state in 1913. The website states: ‘Norway was the first sovereign state to enfranchise women’, and ‘all political parties [in 1913] had incorporated women’s right to vote in their platforms’.⁵⁵ When translated into English, however, this particular historical imagining of Norway – as the first sovereign state to introduce suffrage for all women – was slightly adjusted in order to situate the Norwegian experience within a wider global context. Norway by no means advanced the cause of women’s rights alone! Yet pushing the legal status of Norway as an independent state ensured that the historical imagining remained that of the country as a gender-equality pioneer:

In a global context, the resolution [of Norway] was radical, although three dependent states had already achieved universal suffrage: New Zealand in 1893, Australia in 1902 and Finland in 1906. Norway, however, became the first sovereign state in the world to introduce universal suffrage for both women and men.⁵⁶

The picture painted was thus that Norway was the most progressive state of all in relation to women’s rights – and such an impression was created with the aid of a hierarchy of states based on the dichotomies of independent–dependent and sovereign–not sovereign. In one way, such a representation was accurate. The three countries that had introduced women’s suffrage before Norway – New Zealand, Australia and Finland – were all under foreign rule when they enfranchised women, as either a grand duchy of the Russian Empire or a part of the British Commonwealth. Only Norway was a sovereign state, a fact that meant a lot to Norwegian men and women in 1913, shortly after the dissolution of the Swedish–Norwegian Union. This particular point was also stressed by the first generation of Norwegian gender historians in their efforts to write women’s fight for political citizenship into the historical narrative of Norway.⁵⁷ There is no evidence, however, that Norway was more front-running than any other of the early movers of women’s suffrage in the world. Rather, comparing nation-states in terms of their performance in relation to a single dimension leads to the construction of simple images and the creation of global ‘winners’.

The notion of Norway as the leading pioneer of women’s rights, however, does resonate with a much older image of Scandinavia that was produced in the early 1900s in the context of rising (trans)national women’s suffragist activism.⁵⁸ This image was first created when Finland rather abruptly enfranchised women in 1906, and intensified when Norway in 1907 introduced census-based national suffrage for women. However, with the support of Norwegian feminists and authorities, Norway became the preferred country for American suffragettes to highlight or ‘brand’.⁵⁹ The president of the International Suffrage Alliances (IWA), Carrie Chapman Catt, played a leading role in this development as part of her efforts to combat antisuffragist sentiments in order to secure the passing of the 19th Amendment by the US Senate, as can be seen in her correspondence with Fredrikke Marie Qvam, the leader of the Norwegian suffragist organization.⁶⁰ Several US states had already granted women political citizenship in the late 19th century. To include women at the federal level proved more difficult, however and it was within this context that Norway was depicted as a pioneer of women’s right to vote.⁶¹

Four historical figures for the campaign for women’s rights – Camilla Collett, Fredrikke Marie Qvam, Gina Krog and Fernanda Nissen – were celebrated intensively during the suffrage jubilee. In online presentations, these women were termed ‘the great four [feminists]’ and were presented as Norway’s own pioneers of feminism and equal rights.⁶² Such a framing was not created out of thin air, however. The notion of the ‘great four’ replicated a well-known national symbol initially used in the early 1900s to promote the works of four male authors, including Henrik Ibsen. Later, the expression ‘the great four’ was appropriated by literary scholars, and has since become a matter of general knowledge in Norway. The reliance on this well-used image in relation to the commemoration of women’s suffrage, however, was not entirely successful, as it served to direct the public’s attention to Norway’s four greatest authors and the national canon of literary works rather than the intended subject. Moreover, it created the impression that the granting of voting rights to women was a historical event that had little importance for or relevance to the present.⁶³ A commissioned history, covering Norway’s official gender-equality work from 1814 to 2013 (Norsk likestillingshistorie 1814–2013) provided a far more adequate memorial. Following its formal launch on the exact anniversary of the suffrage bill, the book was distributed to all members of the Norwegian parliament, as well as to Queen Sonja of Norway. The book won the prize for the most beautiful book of the year and was distributed to libraries across the country.⁶⁴

The Norwegian suffrage jubilee was first and foremost constructed as a regional and national event – and the celebration should be considered relatively successful if we are to judge by the number of activities and amount of press coverage to which it gave rise. Rather seamlessly, it combined key qualities of Norwegian national identity, such as regionalism, anti-elitism and independence from foreign rule, with contemporary global images and domestic imaginings of Norway as gender progressive. The attempt to gender the founding fathers of Norwegian democracy proved more difficult. The narratives of women’s suffrage created and circulated during the suffrage centenary would thus never pose a challenge to the primary idea or brand of Norway as an internationally committed (peace) nation. Instead, it can be argued that the international part of the celebration brought the Norwegian commemoration of women’s suffrage into line with the standards and visions of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. According to Inger Skjelsbæk and Torunn Tryggestad, gender equality plays an ambivalent role in Norwegian foreign policy, and values related to gender equality are mobilized or evoked only when they can help reinforce the overall brand of Norway as a peace nation.⁶⁵

Unlike the Finnish imagining of ‘Finland First’, the narrative produced and used during the Norwegian suffrage jubilee had limited bearing or value beyond the domestic arena. It goes almost without saying that the notion of Norway as the first sovereign country in the world to enfranchise women is difficult to appropriate for nation-branding purposes. The main reason for this is that such an imagining of Norway relies upon premises and interpretations that are historically embedded within the construction of the Norwegian nation. Evoking or branding this image thus also means educing a very particular political and historical context and understanding of Norway and its national trajectory. The notion of Norway as the first sovereign state to enfranchise women also fits poorly with how the country wants to be seen and operate abroad today – that is, as a mediator and peacemaker, rather than as a state facilitator of progressive ideas for others to follow. This makes the Norwegian case in some ways strikingly similar to that of Sweden, although there are also significant differences, as we will discuss below.

‘Progressive Sweden’: celebrating 100 years of Swedish democracy (2018–2022)

The celebration of women’s suffrage in Sweden was part of a broader commemoration of democracy that ran from December 2018 until January 2022, which emphasized how universal and equal suffrage was finally granted to Swedish citizens through a democratic process that included the granting of women’s right to vote and to run for office. During extra-parliamentary sessions held in December 1918, an agreement was reached in both chambers to extend the right to vote for men and to eventually grant women the right to vote in parliamentary elections to the second chamber, as well as to run for office. The extra-parliamentary sessions were due to the social and political instability that Sweden was experiencing during a time of protests, hunger and the threat of the Russian Revolution.⁶⁶ The parliamentary reform required a change in the Swedish constitution. The reform that ensured that Swedish women would have the same political rights as men was therefore not finalized until the spring of 1921. So why did the jubilee on democracy and the celebration of women’s suffrage not revolve around 1921? Why start with an agreement made three years before the completion of the reform? Was it a way to catch up with the other Nordic countries? Being the last of the Nordic countries to grant women political citizenship represents something of a challenge for the Swedish brand, which is associated with being progressive and in advance of the other Nordic countries in relation to gender equality. Another possible reason for beginning to celebrate so early relates to the contemporary political situation in Sweden, where there have been growing concerns about the state of democracy in the country.

Our analysis shows that the Swedish jubilee was first and foremost a national event that aimed at strengthening democratic engagement in Sweden today, and through that securing the country’s values for the future. The centenary of women’s suffrage and the history of women’s emancipation thus only played a minor role in what was mediated and celebrated during the jubilee.⁶⁷ The parliamentary website dedicated to the jubilee communicated, for instance, worries about a politically unstable Sweden rather than the history of women’s struggle for equal rights. The study materials designed for elementary and secondary education did the same, as illustrated by the name of a magazine produced for schools: Democracy Never Stands Still!. What was communicated was thus that the stability and endurance of a democratic society cannot be taken for granted: it must be taken care of and maintained at all levels of society. This was a recurring message throughout the jubilee, which was initiated and run by the Swedish parliament under the leadership of the speaker of parliament. Alongside the celebration of the jubilee, a special committee was appointed by the government to help strengthening democracy in civil society – in associations, non-profit organizations, museums, etc.⁶⁸ In the midst of all this ran the centenary of women’s suffrage, a centenary that was both central – not to say necessary – for the commemoration and simultaneously pushed into the periphery of what was discussed and commemorated by the parliament. The language used by the official website of the jubilee was also remarkably gender neutral in its presentation and narration of important historical events. An illuminating example of this is the way in which the jubilee was presented on the official website, www.firademokratin.riksdagen.se, which was launched in 2018:

Parliament celebrates democracy between 2018 and 2022

Parliament marks the occasion of democracy’s breakthrough in Sweden with a jubilee on democracy that will run from 2018 until 2022. One hundred years ago, the Swedish parliament enacted legislation that guaranteed universal and equal suffrage. The parliament will now mark this occasion of a democratic breakthrough in Sweden with a jubilee. The purpose is to increase knowledge about the history of democracy, its meaning and importance. It will seek also to arouse commitment to the importance of democracy, today and in the future. Jubilee events will take place between 2018 and 2022 in the House of Parliament in Stockholm, in other parts of the country, as well as on the web and in social media.⁶⁹

Another telling example is The Future of Democracy (2018), a book that was initiated and published by the Swedish parliament to mark the occasion of the jubilee.⁷⁰ The volume was edited by two political scientists, but aimed for a general readership, including schools.⁷¹ However, none of its 11 chapters on the state of Swedish democracy is concerned with the issue of gender equality or gender-related issues in general. Moreover, whenever it is mentioned on the official webpage, women’s suffrage is repeatedly visualized and presented as part of Sweden’s democratic history, but at the same time disconnected from the overall discussion on the state of Swedish democracy today. A similar pattern can be seen in the study material produced for Swedish schools, in which women’s political citizenship is not dealt with in depth or discussed in relation to the wider historical context of women’s rights and women’s emancipation during the 19th century. How is this lack of interest to be understood? Are current political problems overshadowing the history of women’s suffrage, and gender-related issues in general, making gender equality secondary to what is really at stake (i.e. democracy)? Is the absence of gender issues an effect of Sweden’s self-image as progressive and complete in terms of gender equality and feminism, and therefore not in need of being discussed and nurtured? Is it to be interpreted as an expression of political and social amnesia concerning failures of social justice, women’s rights and discrimination in Sweden today?

As already noted, the Swedes jumpstarted the centenary celebration in 2018, even though the bill granting women the right to vote and run for parliament was completed three years later, in 1921. In this way, the extraordinary parliamentary sessions of 1918 were made into milestones for the achievement of Swedish democracy, which left the centenary of women’s voting rights in the shadow of the larger commemorative celebration.⁷² What were emphasized were the historical processes leading up to the achievement of universal and equal suffrage for both women and men – a narrative that refrains from making clear that universal suffrage for men was granted in 1909.⁷³ As a result, the current celebration of women’s suffrage has been considerably different from earlier commemorations of the same bill, and not only because it ran for a little over three full years. The 50th and 75th anniversaries of the enfranchisement of women in Sweden focused on one year, 1919, and revolved around women’s rights, political representation and the history of women’s emancipation.⁷⁴ Another notable difference between the various commemorations turned on the role given to experts on gender history and women’s political representation.

Gender scholars were not involved in planning the upcoming jubilee. In response, Swedish gender researchers set up a national network of their own. In 2016, this network organized a pre-celebration conference entitled ‘Universal and Equal Suffrage? Critical-Historical Perspectives on Citizenship and Democracy’. The aim of this conference was to bring together scholars interested in the upcoming commemoration event and to initiate critical research on suffrage, citizenship and the history of women’s emancipation in Sweden and beyond. Members of the official planning committee were invited to take part in the scholarly conference, at which it was decided to organize an international conference, ‘Suffrage Now!’, to be held in Stockholm in 2021. Yet, when members of the scholarly network realized that the parliamentary committee had no intention of including them in the official centenary volume on democracy, a decision was taken to work towards a separate book on suffrage and women’s political citizenship.⁷⁵ This volume, entitled Rösträttens århundrade (A Century of Suffrage), was published in 2018 and became a counter-memory alongside the book Demokratins framtid (The Future of Democracy) that was produced by the Swedish parliament.⁷⁶

Even though gender scholars were not included in the official publication of the Swedish centenary celebration, their alternative volume was acknowledged. During the solemn and grand inauguration of the jubilee celebration in Stockholm on 17 December 2018, considerable attention was given to the centenary of women’s suffrage. For instance, a panel discussion on gender rights, the struggle for women’s suffrage and the meaning of political citizenship was organized in the former second chamber of the Swedish parliament, in the presence of the king and the crown princess, and led by the speaker of parliament. But, as already mentioned, a closer look at the material made available on the web and elsewhere shows that the history of women’s emancipation and the struggle for the right to vote was downplayed in favour of other issues that were considered more pressing – such as the state of democracy in contemporary Sweden. Women, pro-suffrage activists and paraphernalia such as posters, banners, etc., were clearly visible in pictures and photos, but a presentation of the historical backdrop to women’s rights and emancipation was lacking. Also missing were discussions on gender rights, feminist perspectives on the contemporary challenges facing Swedish society and democracy, and questions concerning women’s representation in politics. Such an approach helped to create a partial history of women’s rights and feminism, which in turn gave the impression that suffrage was the end goal of women’s emancipation and that Sweden has succeeded in fostering gender equality.⁷⁷ These narratives were problematized to some extent by the volume A Century of Suffrage. However, since that volume was not officially part of the publications produced by the Swedish parliament, it was not listed as part of the study material produced for schools as was the volume on the future for democracy.

Women’s citizenship and emancipation was thus placed on the periphery of the parliamentary commemoration of what was called Sweden’s democratic breakthrough. This might appear surprising from the perspective of nation-branding. Would not the centenary of women’s enfranchisement instead be a central feature of such a commemoration? It is tempting to read the lack of adequate and well-developed information about gender issues during the jubilee as an expression of social amnesia about feminism and gender inequality. Is that the case? Does such an approach confirm the existence of a belief that granting women the right to vote was sufficient in terms of ensuring women’s political participation, and that there are no longer gender-related issues for democracy that need to be addressed? This is up for speculation but, from a nation-branding perspective, the memory-making of the Swedish parliament certainly fits the main characteristics of the Swedish brand: gender equal, progressive and at the top of global indexes.⁷⁸

Scholars have argued that, in the Nordic countries, national self-images based on a narrative about egalitarianism and women’s rights have constructed a strong identity of global superiority concerning gender equality. This notion is further expressed in and mediated through nation-branding activities and global country rankings. This form of ‘Nordic exceptionalism’ tends to render political shortcomings related to racism, gender discrimination and the Nordic colonial past invisible. The invisibility of ongoing injustices not only leads to their maintenance but also results in silence around and denial of ongoing problems.⁷⁹ Issues related to feminism, women’s emancipation, and women’s past and present struggles were not situated at the centre of the Swedish centenary celebration. Given the rise of an anti-gender movement in parts of Europe (Sweden included) and elsewhere, this is surprising. The Swedish case thus illustrates the selectivity involved in the production of national memories, as well as how efforts to present, or construct, a past that fits the image of the nation in the present increase within the era of nation-branding. The Swedish jubilee prioritized the political situation of contemporary Sweden, where right-wing radicals question core democratic values, and social segregation and immigration are accused of eroding the Swedish welfare state. The concern for the present situation in Sweden has resulted in a use of history in which women’s struggles for social justice and other reforms are not evoked. In this reluctance to celebrate women’s emancipation and its history or to render visible ongoing gender discrimination, we can see some similarities with the Norwegian suffrage jubilee. This enables Sweden once again to appear superior in terms of how to manifest and celebrate democracy and equal rights – this time by paying little attention either to women’s rights and the history of feminism or to the current situation regarding gender rights in the country.

Concluding remarks

Cultural and national memories tell us, as Astrid Erll, among others, has stressed, more about the present and the future than about the parts of the past that are evoked in memory production. This tendency to prioritize the present over the past affects not only how historical events are celebrated, but also how national experiences are remembered, mediated and passed on to coming generations.⁸⁰ ‘To brand or not’ was still not necessarily the question when Finland, Norway and Sweden from the early 2000s onwards decided to celebrate 100 years of women’s suffrage. Nevertheless, the perspective of nation-branding can be used to shed light on the production of national memory during the centenary celebrations since all three countries are actively engaged in promoting themselves abroad as front-runners of gender equality. Finland is the most telling example of how the history of women’s right to vote is today used to promote the Nordic countries as gender-equality pioneers. According to the site Finland.fi, Finland is a pioneer because of its early enfranchisement of women, which is presented as a national victory, and because Finland was the first country in the world to integrate women in parliament.⁸¹ This partly supports the overall argument of this article, namely, that national commemorations and jubilees on gender rights and feminist achievements have become important arenas of Nordic nation-branding. To conclude, then, three main observations can be made from our comparison of how the centenary celebrations of women’s suffrage were organized, narrated and used in Finland, Sweden and Norway, and how this in turn helped the three Nordic countries to differentiate themselves from each other while still retaining a global image as gender-equality pioneers.

First, the three Nordic countries compared in this article, intentionally or not, adjusted their national narratives about the introduction of women’s suffrage in order to make those narratives compatible with foreign images and national self-representations of the countries as exceptionally gender-equal. For Finland and Norway, this was done by representing themselves as nothing less than pioneers of gender equality, as front-runners of women’s access to power and ability to transform society in a woman-friendly direction. Sweden, on the other hand, celebrated the achievement of democracy by commemorating reforms that led to the inclusion of women in the polity without specifically focusing on gender issues or the history of women’s struggles for equal rights and emancipation. As a result, the centenary celebrations of the three different countries had to evoke remarkably different pasts and perspectives: Finland showcased itself as the first European state to introduce universal suffrage for women on equal terms with men. Norway showcased itself according to the premise that it was the first sovereign state in the world to make women political citizens. And Sweden jumpstarted the jubilee in a way that can be interpreted as an effort to catch up with its Nordic neighbours and remain on top of global gender rankings. The narrative created during the Swedish jubilee required a somewhat adjusted history in which universal and equal suffrage is presented as something given to men and women at the same time through a democratic process that began in December 1918 and ended in January 1922, when the first men and women elected under the new rules took their seats in the Swedish parliament.

A second observation made from our comparison is that the Swedish jubilee helped to make the country’s national narrative about universal suffrage similar to that presented in the Finnish approach by downplaying the introduction of universal male suffrage in 1909 to the benefit of the parliamentary reforms of 1918–1921. But only in Finland did the centenary of women’s suffrage present itself as an opportunity for a new national brand to develop – that is, under the slogan ‘Finland First’. The historical narratives about women’s suffrage created in Sweden and Norway during the centenary celebrations supported more established national ideas and brands, such as ‘progressive Sweden’ and Norway as ‘the first sovereign state’ – though the latter conception is not regarded by policymakers as being as important as the notion of Norway as an international and trustworthy (peace) nation. In Finland, older understandings of Finnish women’s agency – the figure of the ‘strong woman’ – were partly used and partly subjected to critique. What is clear is that these national imaginings were based on a mediation of a past that was in agreement with contemporary discourses and notions of the Nordic countries as exceptionally gender equal. The historical achievements of Finland, Norway or Sweden were described and measured in terms of only one or two dimensions, or simply by ignoring parts of the past that do not fit the present picture of, for instance, Sweden as a progressive, feminist superpower.

A third and final observation drawn from our comparison is that feminist organizations and gender researchers played key roles in memory production when the parliaments and governments of Finland and Norway agreed to commemorate 100 years of women’s suffrage. In Sweden, however, gender researchers were not included in the preparations of the official jubilee and therefore organized to create additional (counter-)narratives. The Norwegian government decided to celebrate the introduction of women’s suffrage only after feminist organizations accused the government of ignoring gender issues in the preparations for the 200-year anniversary of the country’s constitution. Gender researchers held no prominent roles in the actual planning of the celebrations in the three countries. Nevertheless, specialists in gender research authored many of the history books and articles commissioned for the various celebrations. In doing so, they provided legitimacy to national narratives of women’s suffrage. The exception here, once again, is Sweden, where gender scholars were kept on the outside of the jubilee organized by the parliament. The image of progressive Sweden still overshadowed or outplayed the memory of women’s suffrage, partly because the authorities used the jubilee to highlight contemporary political concerns but without paying attention to gender-related contemporary issues. Looking at how the questions of what pasts should be commemorated, and how, thus tells a lot about how individual Nordic countries currently see and brand themselves, both at home and abroad – that is, as gender-equal countries and democracies. It also reveals how the index industry is factored into the national commemorations of individual Nordic states. Gender equality is an inevitable part of both, whether it is addressed and made explicitly visible or not. Our comparison of the Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish centenary celebrations of women’s suffrage therefore has relevance for the bulging scholarship on Nordic and Swedish exceptionalism, image-building and nation-branding.⁸²

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Additional information

Notes on contributors

Eirinn Larsen

Eirinn Larsen, born 1969, is a professor of history at the University of Oslo. Her publications span the history of capitalism and entrepreneurship, European management education, suffrage rights and democracy, higher education and minority rights, science policies and modern historiography. Larsen leads the interdisciplinary research project ‘Nordic Branding’, financed by the UiO:Nordic initiative (2015–2023).

Ulla Manns

Ulla Manns, born in 1959, is a professor of gender studies and an associate professor of history of ideas at Södertörn University. Manns specializes on the history of 19th-century feminism in Sweden and has focused especially on ideas of emancipation. Recent studies are on feminist historiography, cultural memory and same-sex relations in the early women’s movement. She has also studied the development of Swedish and Nordic gender research.

Ann-Catrin Östman

Ann-Catrin Östman, born 1965, is a senior lecturer and docent of history at Åbo Akademi University. In her research, she has focused especially on the history and historiography of gender, citizenship, and work in agrarian cultures, as well as on the history of consumption, trade and migration. Östman leads a project on banishments in Finland and Sweden 1500–1900 (Academy of Finland, 2021–2024).

Notes

1. Jensen, “Historieformidling og erindringspolitikk”.

2. Jezierska and Towns, “Variations on Shared Themes”; Byrkjeflot et al., The Making and Circulation of Nordic Models, Ideas and Images.

3. Larsen, “The Gender-Progressive Nordics”; Jezierska and Towns, “Variations on Shared Themes”.

4. Jezierska and Towns, “Variations on Shared Themes”.

5. Marklund, “The Social Laboratory, the Middle Way and the Swedish Model”; Anderson and Hilson, “Images of Sweden and the Nordic Countries”.

6. Manns, “Memory Works”; Larsen, “Vellykket jubileumsfortelling”.

7. Jezierska and Towns, “Variations on Shared Themes: Branding the Nordics as Gender Equal.”

8. Aronczyk, “Nation Branding,” 233; Kaneva, Branding Post-Communist Nations.

9. Kirkebø, Langford, and Byrkleflot, “Creating Gender Exceptionalism,” 197.

10. Ibid., 192.

11. Dinnie, Nation Branding; Leonard, Britain^TM; Viktorin et al., Nation Branding in Modern History.

12. Vuignier, “Place Marketing and Place Branding”.

13. Angell and Mordhorst, “National Reputation Management”; Mordhorst, “The History of Nation Branding and Nation Branding as History”.

14. Jezierska and Towns, “Variations on Shared Themes”.

15. Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Norway, “Women’s Rights and Gender Equality”.

16. Ministry of Culture, Norway, “Gender Equality”.

17. Swedish Institute, “The Swedish Institute”.

18. Jezierska and Towns, “Variations on Shared Themes”.

19. Andersson and Hilson, “Images of Sweden and the Nordic Countries”; Marklund, “The Social Laboratory, the Middle Way and the Swedish Model”; Marklund and Petersen, “Return to Sender”.

20. Government Offices of Sweden, “Handbook Sweden’s Feminist Foreign Policy”.

21. Country Brand Delegation [of Finland], Mission for Finland.

22. Moilanen, “A Road Map for Finland’s Nation Branding”.

23. Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, Finland, “Finland Is a Gender Equality Pioneer”.

24. Aronsson et al., “Nordic National Histories,” 282.

25. Aronsson et al., “Nordic National Histories”; Heiret og Ryymin, “Konklusjon”; Markkola, “Constructing and Deconstructing the ‘Strong Finnish Woman’”.

26. See Colman-Denstad, “Historiebruk som merkevarebygging”; Larsen, “Vellykket jubileumsfortelling”; Manns, “Memory Works”.

27. Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, Finland, “Finland Is a Gender Equality Pioneer”.

28. Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, Finland, “Naisten täydet poliittiset oikeudet 100 vuotta,” Foreword.

29. Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, Finland, “Naisten täydet poliittiset oikeudet 100 vuotta,” Foreword, 9–10.

30. Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, Finland, “Naisten täydet poliittiset oikeudet 100 vuotta,” abstract.

31. Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, Finland, “Naisten täydet poliittiset oikeudet 100 vuotta,” 10.

32. See http://www.aanioikeus.fi/.

33. See http://www.aanioikeus.fi/. See also Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, Finland, “Naisten täydet poliittiset oikeudet 100 vuotta,” 9.

34. NYTKIS (Naisjärjestöt Yhteistyössä–Kvinnoorganisationer i Samarbete), an umbrella organization for all women’s associations in the country, was the key actor or stakeholder Members of the feminist organization Naisasialiitto Unioni, which is Finland’s oldest feminist society, founded in 1892, were also included, in addition to members of the National Council of Women of Finland, which was established in 1911.

35. Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, Finland, “Naisten täydet poliittiset oikeudet 100 vuotta,” Foreword. See also www.aanioikeus.fi/asiantuntijatietokanta/ (accessed 8 July 2021).

36. Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, Finland, “Naisten täydet poliittiset oikeudet 100 vuotta,” 15–16.

37. A doctoral dissertation was also included in the list of centenary publications presented by the committee; see Kuusipalo, “Sukupuolittunut poliittinen edustus Suomessa”. In addition, an agreement on the production of specific web pages on the subject of women’s suffrage was signed by the Christina Institute of the University of Helsinki, the university’s institute for gender studies. This increased the spread of news about various events, with smaller articles being included to provide information about the history of women’s suffrage in Finland, its political significance and other related themes. Information about the anniversary was to be disseminated widely, including to schools and municipalities, and everyone was invited to join in and organize their own celebration events; see Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, Finland, “Naisten täydet poliittiset oikeudet 100 vuotta,” 13. See also http://www.aanioikeus.fi/en/ (accessed 24 June 2020).

38. Sulkunen, Lähteenmäki, and Korpi-Tommola, Kvinnorna i Riksdagen. The book was published by the Centre for Parliamentary Studies at Turku University.

39. Sulkunen, Lähteenmäki, and Korpi-Tommola, Kvinnorna i Riksdagen, 10.

40. Markkola, “Constructing and Deconstructing the ‘Strong Finnish Woman’”.

41. Sulkunen, Nevala-Nurmi, and Markkola, “Introduction,” 1.

42. Ibid., 1–2.

43. Moring, Kön och politik.

44. Ministry of Children, Equality and Social Inclusion, Norway, Stemmerettsjubileet 1913–2013, 5.

45. Ibid.

46. Ljunggren, “Elitist Egalitarianism”.

47. Colman-Denstad, “Historiebruk som merkevarebygging,” 15, with references to the final report on the constitutional jubilee of Norway in 2014 (‘Grunnlovsjubilleets sluttrapport’).

48. Håland, “Mødrene har grædt”; Håland, “Usynliggjøring”.

49. Office of the Prime Minster, “Open Letter to the Prime Minster and the President of the Norwegian Parliament,” April 16, 2009. For details, see Colman-Denstad, “Historiebruk som merkevarebygging”.

50. Roux, “Huitfeldt vil feire kvinners stemmerett”.

51. Folkvord, “Et merkeår for demokratiet”.

52. Colmand-Denstad, “Historiebruk som merkevarebygging,” 58 (referring to Colman-Denstad’s interview with Torunn Tryggestad, March 20, 2019).

53. Ministry of Children, Equality and Social Inclusion, Norway, Stemmerettsjubileet 1913–2013, 11.

54. Gro Harlem Brundtland was the first woman to serve as prime minister of Norway, in 1981, 1986–1989 and 1990–1996. She was also the first female prime minster in the Nordic region. The Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), which has a specialist team on ‘Women, Peace and Security’, was the formal organizer of the conference.

55. Ericsson Ryste, “I mål”.

56. Ericsson Ryste, “I mål”. Ericsson Ryste, “Women’s Rocky Road to Suffrage,” emphasis added.

57. Larsen, “Kvinne- og kjønnshistoriens fortellinger”; Larsen and Øksendal, “De glemte kvinnevalgene”. See also Melby, “Husmortid, 1900–1950,” 272; Blom, “1905 – et gledens eller sorgens år?,” 115; Hagemann, “To Become a Political Subject,” 128.

58. Larsen, “The Gender-Progressive Nordics”; Vangen, “Gender Equal Forerunners?”.

59. Larsen, “The Gender-Progressive Nordics,” 27–30.

60. Archive after Fredrikke Marie Qvam, Private Archive No. 5, The University Library of NTNU, Special Collection, Trondheim, Norway. Box 22: Correspondence 1908; Box 23: Correspondence 1909.

61. Vangen, “Gender Equal Forerunners?”.

62. Colmand-Denstad, “Historiebruk som merkevarebygging,” 27–28. Camilla Collett was a female author who as early as the 1860s had openly sympathized with the feminist cause, before Norway had any feminist movement to speak of. Gina Krog was founder of the first suffragette association in Norway, established in 1884; longstanding editor of the feminist bulletin Nylænde; and head of the Norwegian branch of the International Council of Women. Fernanda Nissen was a literary critics and spokesperson for working-class women.

63. A film about ‘the great four [feminists]’ was commissioned by the planning committee, in addition to short paperback biographies of each of them; see Ministry of Children, Equality and Social Inclusion, Norway, Stemmerettsjubileet 1913–2013, 38–40.

64. Skaar, “Norsk likestillingshistorie ble årets vakreste bok”.

65. Skjelsbæk and Tryggestad, “Protecting the Brand?”.

66. The first chamber had turned down the suggestion for several years. For a detailed overview of the process and the restrictions to vote, see Berg and Ericsson, Allmän rösträtt?

67. Manns, “Memory Works”.

68. The government in place until the election of September 2018 – a coalition between the Social Democratic Party and the Green Party – appointed a committee for strengthening democracy; see Sveriges Riksdag, “Demokratin 100 år”. For a detailed presentation and analysis of the centenary of women’s suffrage in the national jubilee on democracy, see Manns, “Memory Works”.

69. Sveriges Riksdag, “Riksdagen firar demokratin 2018–2022”.

70. Barrling and Holmberg, Demokratins framtid.

71. The main material for schools consists of the volume Demokratins framtid and the magazine Demokratin står aldrig stilla!, which was slightly updated in August 2020. All study material is available online at http://firademokratin.riksdagen.se/studiematerial/studiematerialet/ (accessed 13 July 2021).

72. See Sveriges Riksdag, “Talmannens inledningsanförande”; Sveriges Riksdag, “Filmer”; Nilsson, “Sista akten i rösträttsdramat”; Demokratin står aldrig stilla!; Norlén, “Förord.”

73. The first women elected were, in the first chamber, Kerstin Hesselgren (Liberal) and, in the second chamber, Nelly Thüring (Social Democrat), Elisabeth Tamm (Liberal), Bertha Wellin (Conservative) and Agda Östlund (Social Democrat).

74. Previous publications by the Swedish parliament include Hamrin-Thorell, Lindström, and Stenberg, Kvinnors röst och rätt (1968) and Björkenhem, Engström, and Wängnerud, Rätt att rösta 1919–1995 (1994).

75. Manns, “Memory Works”.

76. Holgersson and Wängnerud, Rösträttens århundrade. The book was funded by Riksbankens jubileumsfond and published on an open-access basis, which means it is free to download. Riksbankens jubileumsfond also provided free printed copies to schoolteachers; see Riksbankens jubileumsfond, ‘RJ skänker antologi till lärare’.

77. Manns, “Memory Works”.

78. Jezierska and Towns, “Variations on Shared Themes”.

79. Larsen, “The Gender-Progressive Nordics”.

80. Jensen, “Historieformidling og erindringspolitikk”; Erll, Memory in Culture; Erll, “Cultural Memory Studies”.

81. See www.stm.fi (accessed 10 March 2020).

82. Browning, “Branding Nordicity”; Andersson and Hilson, “Images of Sweden and the Nordic Countries”; Marklund, “The Social Laboratory, the Middle Way and the Swedish Model”; Marklund and Petersen, “Return to Sender”; Hellesnes, “Fabricating Sweden”; Larsen, Moss, and Skjelsbæk, Gender Equality and Nation Branding in the Nordic Region.