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In Europe, the high hopes for social revolution by the extreme left, and hopes for the full implementation of the liberal ideals of 1848 for the moderate left, were countered by reactionary trends, right-wing political victories, and xenophobia. The news for the Woman Question was both good and bad. At least in the more advanced industrial nations, there was a growing consensus about the desirability of women gaining the vote. There were still significant differences of opinion among women and men about what should be done with that vote, and what an appropriate adjustment of gender roles might involve, once formal civil equality had been achieved. Most countries have a tiny minority of doctrinaire feminists calling for major shifts in sex roles. Women were not in agreement about what was to be done about the Woman Question, even though industrial workers were.

German women voted in larger numbers than men after female suffragist was included in the 1919 constitution, despite the fact that Secular Leftists had long been the strongest supporters of giving the vote to women. If the vote to women had been delayed for a decade or so, the German political left would have been stronger.

The new constitution being considered in Spain in the late 1920s favored giving women the vote because of the dictator's belief that they were less attracted to secular, left-wing causes. As far as Spanish women were concerned, he was correct in that belief. Conservative leaders supported female suffragists after World War II.

The experience of women in the Soviet Russia during the interwar years was strange.

Gaining the vote in a Communist dictatorship was almost meaningless. The country's several interwar constitutions included clauses that extended women's rights and protections far beyond the constitutions of western Europe. All avenues of employment were opened to women when they joined the Soviet workforce.

In practice, Soviet women were still almost entirely responsible for traditional domestic chores, such as cooking, child-rearing, and housekeeping. This experience of being formally liberated but also feeling unfairly burdened by domestic responsibilities would become a much-discussed issue in all industrially advanced non-Communist countries.

Mass starvation, ruthless collectivization of agriculture, and arrests for alleged political subversion were the most pressing worries of Soviet citizens. Almost every extended family was affected by these tragedies.

The belief of John Stuart Mill that giving the vote to women would result in a world less characterized by aggressive attitudes was overly optimistic. The struggle to gain the vote was partially won by the end of the war. In the Netherlands and Britain, women gained the vote in 1917 and 1918, but in France, Italy, and Switzerland, women had to wait until 1944. In southern and eastern Europe, women's suffrage wasn't achieved in the immediate prewar period, but in the later part of the 20th century. Civil war and the victory of Franco's right-wing forces led to no elections in Spain for many years, despite the fact that it came with the constitution of the Second Republic in 1931.

Women's suffragists sent delegates to Paris in 1919 in hopes that the Peace Conference would take a stand favorable to women's issues. President Wilson spoke favorably to them about establishing a commission of the Conference to deal with women's franchise. He found support for the project from other leaders at the Conference.

The issue of giving women the vote should be left to individual countries according to Lord Balfour, who affirmed that he was in favor of giving women the vote. American women gained the vote in 1920 after Wilson let the matter drop in Paris.

By 1919-20, there was a noticeable shift in attitudes towards women's participation in public life. In the interwar years, very few women gained any kind of major elected office, despite the fact that broad acceptance of women as political leaders was still far away. Although traditional beliefs about sex roles were challenged by the experiences of war, most European males were completely unprepared to assume equal responsibility in the domestic sphere, and few women at this point were seriously asking for such a change.

The urgent demands of total war had pulled millions of women into defense indus tries, often into arenas of physically demanding employment that had previously been considered appropriate only to men or that simply had been vacant by men going to the front and urgent needed to be filled. In late 1918 and early 1919 men returning from the front found that the jobs they wanted were filled by women. There were reports of returning soldiers in Italy chanting misogynist slogans and accusing women of being responsible for the widespread unemployment in the country. Many women were content to return to more traditional positions in other countries. This did not apply to all women because many had become widows and had to face the prospect of being the primary breadwinners for their children and other dependents. Millions of unmarried women had to realize that they were less likely to find a mate because of the millions of men killed at the front. Feminism had ideals of selfreliant women doing anything men could do. This route was a cruel one to achieve them.