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Presentation of the book “Promoters of changes”

Few people know that Swiss women got the right to vote only in 1971. Quite late, it was given to women of another highly developed European democracy – France (since 1944).

However, women of Western Ukraine were able to fully enjoy the right to vote and the opportunity to be elected to the Parliament as early as in the 1920s. Legislation of the Second Polish Commonwealth (the state, which then included the territories of Western Ukraine) equalized women and men in suffrage.

Such an initiative in the Polish state was in line with the pan-European democratic trend of the interwar period. It was then that women of Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, etc. were granted voting rights.

However, as it is today, this legislative equality did not yet mean the true equality of men and women in the political life. Women had to fight for their right to be elected to parliaments, often overcoming the negative stereotypes of the then masculine environment and open counteraction to their emancipatory aspirations.

The book of historian from Rivne region Iryna Levchuk "Promoters of changes: the activities of women's organizations in Poland in the interwar period" tells the story of women's struggle for their rights and their initiatives in the field of social emancipation.

The presentation of this book was organized by NGO “Mnemonics” on March 13 at the premises of Rivne Regional Universal Scientific Library.

Read more here.