“The Ballot Humbug”

Anarchist Women and Women’s Suffrage

Abstract

This article explores how anarchist women viewed the feminist struggle for suffrage in the early 1900s. By focusing on this ostensible historical anomaly — women against patriarchy refuting the call for women’s suffrage — the article ventures into a plural history of feminism. The historiographic wave metaphor, typically employed to portray different stages of feminism, is here reimagined as radio waves. Through a variety of publications written by influential anarchist women, the article tunes into a broadcast that airs how anarchy expels patriarchy through a generic struggle against hierarchy. The case of anarchist women and women’s suffrage arguably signposts how to productively invoke plurality in social movement historiography.