On December 18 it will be exactly one hundred years since the constitutive National Assembly adopted electoral rules including the general right to vote for women.

A milestone for equal rights for women that was achieved only by the resolute demands and struggles of many women that lasted many decades.

In her play “Bread and Roses,” Susanne Ayoub portrays two important activists in the Austrian women’s movement who are representative of many others: the middle-class writer Rosa Mayreder, who fought for the education and social recognition of women, and the Social Democratic politician Adelheid Popp represented the interests of working women, especially the demand that to this day has not been met: equal pay for equal work.

The play describes the very different fates of the two women as well as their social and political milieus.

After the play, the significance of the right to vote will be examined in a panel discussion with the historian Johanna Gehmacher and the migration researcher Bernhard Perchinig. Johanna Gehmacher will illuminate the historical importance of the introduction of women’s right to vote. Bernhard Perchinig will take a look at those who have no right to vote in our times. Who is affected, and what does it mean for immigrants, particularly for women?

Participants:

Susanne Ayoub, born in 1956 in Baghdad, is an author and director.

Johanna ​Gehmacher​, historian.

Bernhard Perchinig, political scientist.

Maren Rahmann, singer, performance artist, musician.

Johanna Tomek, actor, longtime principal cast member and radio voice, lives in Burgenland and Vienna. SHE WILL STAND IN FOR DORIS MAYER, WHO PASSED AWAY ON DECEMBER 6.