Abstract A Finnish socialist female parliamentarian stopped on the Dutch border: the (de)politicization of Finnish women’s suffrage in Dutch battles on votes for womenThis research article in transnational history analyses an incident during which
Hilja Pärssinen, a Finnish socialist woman MP, was stopped on the Dutch border in September 1913 on her way to visit a suffragette college in London. This two-hour event at the border and public controversy that followed were clashes between competing ideological and gendered discourses
on women’s political agency. The incident was a nexus of intersecting discourses on a range of issues: Dutch and international debates on women’s suffrage, discourse on ‘white slavery’, racial prejudices towards East Europeans, Marxist class struggle discourse, and
fears of socialism. During the incident, the authorities seemed to be casting the identity of an illegal immigrant or a Russian prostitute on Pärssinen. Provoked against her psycho-physical experiences, she protested by performing that identity. Afterwards, transnationally connected socialists
politicized the case in their fight for women’s political rights, while the authorities and the non-socialist press consistently depoliticized it.
A Finnish socialist female parliamentarian stopped on the Dutch border : The (de)politicization of Finnish women’s suffrage in Dutch battles on votes for women
