| Summary: | During the early 20th century, two significant changes were done in relation to suffrage. The first introduced universal suffrage for men between 1907 and 1909. For women, the decision was made in the year 1920 which introduced suffrage for them. Both these reforms included a big debate, and many was against it for different reasons. This study’s purpose has been to investigate the debate out of a gender perspective during both these reforms in newspapers. The material has been delimited to only leader pages and letters to the newspaper with the purpose to see people’s opinions in these questions. The material from the two periods has been compared to each other out of a gender perspective to see differences and similarities between the two reforms. The essay has been written with a qualitive text analysis and the result has been analysed with Yvonne Hirdman’s theory about gender system. The result showed that most of the texts was in favour of a universal suffrage for men and not many was against it. Instead, the debate was about the election system if it would be a majority election or proportional elections. In the texts where the author was against a universal suffrage for men, they were arguing for that poorer social groups should not have suffrage because they were not able to take political decisions. In the second period studying women’s suffrage the opinions were more dissimilar with both argument against and for a reform. The biggest difference between the two periods has been what the focus is on in the arguments against a reform. In the first period it has been on social groups, work, and education. In the second period it has been gender and what their qualities alleges to be. Even if this has been a major difference it can also be seen as a similarity because during both periods, some persons were considered to be more inferior to others. In summary it can be said that Hirdman’s gender system has been visible in many of the arguments.
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