In the 1920s newly enfranchised Austrian women crossed the line separating the private sphere of home and family and entered the arena of political participation. Catholic women, schooled in the experience of their church organizations, were no exception. But although they mobilized within the democratic framework and under the rights and privileges provided by the First Republic, their initial agenda consisted of a commitment to the primacy of woman's role as mother and homemaker, and saw involvement in the political arena merely as an expedient in defense of the domestic sphere. Furthermore, the Weltanschauung of Catholic women was initially hostile to parliamentary democracy, to the very system that allowed—or in their eyes made necessary—their political mobilization.