A women’s list stood in the Reykjavík municipal elections of 1908.
Kvenréttindafélag Íslands (the Icelandic Women’s Rights Association) called the boards of the women’s societies in Reykjavík to a meeting on 2 November 1907 about the municipal elections to be held in January 1908. Under a new law on municipal elections in Reykjavík, voters’ wives now had the vote, along with unmarried women and widows who paid tax, and women were very keen to use their right as well as they could. The meeting decided that the women’s societies should put forward a separate list in the elections. Each society was to nominate one or more women as candidates. The women’s list was made up of Katrín Magnússon, chair of Hið íslenska kvenfélag (the Icelandic Women’s Society), Þórunn Jónassen, chair of the Thorvaldsen Society, Bríet Bjarnhéðinsdóttir, chair of the Icelandic Women’s Rights Association, and Guðrún Björnsdóttir, a member of the Icelandic Women’s Rights Association. The list won by far the most votes in the election, almost 22%, and got all four candidates elected.
The women campaigned extremely well before the election. They opened a campaign office and set up district committees, which were to visit every single woman entitled to vote in the town and get her to use her right and vote for women. The National and University Library of Iceland keeps a poster from the women’s list, which was pasted on empty walls in the town, advertising the list and urging women to vote for it. The poster is kept with other printed material in the Library, which holds many valuable printed items connected with political activity in the country.
Here is the poster from the women’s list of 1908 (click to see a larger picture):
Read more about the women’s lists on the Women’s History Archives website (in Icelandic).