Františka Plamínková

Teaching and early women's rights activism

Plamínková began teaching in 1894 at the elementary school in Tábor and then taught for the last six months of the year in Soběslav. Moving back to Prague in 1895, she completed her teaching internship in 1900 and was certified to teach drawing, mathematics, physics, and writing. She joined the Association of Czech Teachers and spoke out against the Austro-Hungarian law which forbade teachers marriage and required that they remain celibate.

In 1901, Plamínková founded the Women's Club in Prague and four years later formed the Committee for Women's Suffrage. Plamínková became the driving force behind the Czech push for enfranchisement and worked to raise the public consciousness about the need for voting rights. In their rallies, the women supported the right for universal suffrage, for men as well as women, who were denied the right to vote by Habsburg rule. In 1907, men were granted the right by the Austrian government for imperial elections, but women were denied. Plamínková realized that the local Bohemian law did not actually prohibit women at the provincial level and convinced several political parties to field female candidates; her committee put forward Marie Tůmová. Though none won, it was repeated in subsequent elections and served as a symbol of Czech nationalism. In 1912, the first woman, Božena Viková-Kunětická, was elected and though the governor invalidated the result, the election won Plamínková and the Czech feminists international recognition. During this same time, Plamínková traveled throughout Europe and served as a news correspondent in the First Balkan War.

Politician in the First Czechoslovak Republic

Attempts by Austria-Hungary at restricting liberty and quashing Czech nationalism during World War I, had the opposite result, in that they forced exiles to seek help from Western Allies to push for an independent Czechoslovakia. The "Washington Declaration" establishing the First Czechoslovak Republic abolished nobility, redistributed noble lands and provided for the separation of church and state. It also eliminated class, gender, and religious barriers, and gave women political, social and cultural parity with men. As Western Allies made the Washington Declaration a condition of declaring peace, women gained voting rights in 1918.

The changes were immediate. The law requiring teachers to remain unmarried and celibate was abolished in 1919. A member of the Czechoslovak Socialist Party, Plamínková contested the first local elections in 1919. Elected to serve on the Prague City Council, she resigned her teaching post. She was also appointed as the Czechoslovak delegate for the General Assembly of the League of Nations in Geneva. At the Geneva conference of international feminists in June 1920, Plamínková was able to report that in the first parliamentary election of 1920, 54% of the voters were women, as opposed to 46% men; 12% of the provincial posts were filled by women; 13 of the 302 members of the Chamber of Deputies were women; and 3 of the 150 Senators elected were women.

By 1923, Plamínková realized that the legislature was not interested in making corrections to the civil code which would bring forth women's equality. She founded the Women's National Council (ŽNR), which aligned with the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA) and the International Council of Women (ICW), quickly becoming an influential lobbying group. The ŽNR first focused on changing the family and marriage law hoping to attain legal equality in laws governing marriage and divorce. One of Plamínková's main goals was turning the existing paid maternity leave into an effective entitlement, since rather than getting paid the three-month benefit, women were threatened with dismissal. Another focus was a change to the code which designated the man as head of the household, putting women in the same position as children and giving them no say in their economic life or guardianship concerns. She used her writing abilities to further feminist goals, publishing in Orbis, a publishing house founded in 1923.