ELEVEN YEARS AFTER the implementation of male suffrage in 1907, the Proclamation of the Republic on November 12, 1918, set the stage for universal and equal suffrage in Austria. In those turbulent times marked by strikes and demonstrations, Social Democracy established itself as a force for order. From this position of power, the Social Democrats succeeded in implementing universal male and female suffrage in December 1918. But the acquisition of active and passive voting rights was not due solely to the social and political upheavals that occurred in the wake of World War I. Rather, the women's movement in both its bourgeois and proletarian incarnations played a key role in the long and constant struggle for participation that led up to women's suffrage. Women now officially entered institutional politics and their organizations as both voters and political actors in the aftermath of the war. After the first election in February 1919, 8 women representatives entered the Austrian Parliament, 7 Social Democrats and 1 Christian Social. Between 1920 and 1923, 12 women served as representatives, a number not to be reached again in Austria until 1978. During the first postwar voting period for the Vienna Municipal Council (1919–1923), 19 of its 165 members were women.

The attainment of formal political rights was the prelude to a series of struggles for comprehensive political, social, economic, and cultural participation. Political themes and concerns for women of the Social Democratic Workers’ Party (Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei, SDAP) ranged from “equal pay for equal work” to the amendment of Articles 144 to 148 criminalizing abortion, which carried over from the Austrian Empire's penal code of 1852. Women of the SDAP also voiced their demand for equal access to education and career opportunities. At the same time, challenges in the areas of housing, work, and living were central themes of a politics animated by a women's movement whose actors debated alternative forms of living. Under the mottos “socialization of the household” and “rationalization and centralization of housekeeping,” women engaged in deliberations about the reorganization of reproductive work.