1919: The First Female Members in the Austrian Parliament

In the law on state and government reform enacted in Austria in 1918, electoral law was adjusted so that it was now based on “proportional representation and universal, equal, direct and secret voting rights for all citizens regardless of sex”. At the first elections held under these provisions, on February 16, 1919, women were allowed to vote for the first time.

The following eight women were elected to the constitutive National Assembly on March 4, 1919:

The Christian Social politician Hildegard Burjan (1883–1933), one of the founders of “Caritas Socialis", and the following Social Democrats: Anna Boschek (1874–1957), member of the Social Democratic Workers Party since 1891 and a board member of the Free Trade Unions; Emmy Freundlich (1878–1948), the only female member of the League of Nations Economics Committee; Adelheid Popp (1869–1939), cofounder and director of the 1892 social women’s newspaper “Arbeiterinnen-Zeitung”; Gabriele Proft (1879–1953), Secretary of the National Women's Organisation of the Social Democratic Workers Party as of 1909 and president of the Socialist Women’s Organisation in 1945; Therese Schlesinger (1863–1940), member of the party executive of the Social Democratic Party, who fled from the Nazi regime to France in 1938; Amalie Seidel (1876–1952) who organised the first workers’ strike in Austria in 1893 and from 1903 to 1932 a leading functionary of the Social Democratic Women's Organisation; and Maria Tusch (1868–1939), chair of the Carinthian Women’s Committee of the Austrian Social Democratic Workers Party and member of the Carinthian regional party executive committee. The latter was the only Member of Parliament from a federal state (i.e. not from Vienna).

In 1927, the Christian Social Olga Rudel-Zeynek became the first female president of the Federal Council.