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Liechtenstein is a microstate, which is why most people give a microshit about it. It’s a German-speaking “principality” between Austria and Switzerland that is only 64 square miles with a population of only 39,000. Aw, how quaint. Not so quaint is it took them until 1984 to figure out that allowing women to vote in national elections might be a good idea.
--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: July 1, 1984--
Liechtenstein is a member of the UN, but not the EU. It used to be a haven for greedy billionaire fuckwipes who think paying taxes is for peasants, and still has a thriving financial sector. As a result, it has one of the highest GDPs in the world in terms of individual purchasing power. The skiing is nice.
It was the last European country to allow women the vote. There was a referendum about women’s suffrage in 1968 where they actually allowed women to vote on getting the right to vote. The tally was 40% of men in favor, but only 50% of women in favor. So it failed. There were two more referendums on the issue in 1971 and ’73, but in a slide backwards they said “yeah let’s leave this up to the men.” The referendums both failed to pass, with 49% and 43% approval from the dudes, respectively. This was despite both major political parties and the media saying hey guys we look like a bunch of backwardass misogynistic fucks so you really should vote yes. But more than half of them said no we like being backwards misogynists.
And so they tried a referendum again in 1984 and again they said just the penisfolk get to vote on whether non-penis-people can vote after we do this penis-only vote. And on July 1, 1984, by a narrow margin of a penis hair over 51%, the fuckers finally said yeah okay welcome to the 20th century.
And while this definitely was backward as fuck, they weren’t the only ones late to the equal-voting-rights-for-women game. Their neighbor Switzerland didn’t allow women to vote in federal elections until 1971. It was the struggle for women’s suffrage in Switzerland that poured fuel on the movement in Liechtenstein.
One of the champions of the movement in Liechtenstein was Melitta Marxer. Born in 1923 and married in 1948, she gave birth to three daughters, and once they were grown she was pissed that the only one in the family allowed to vote was her husband. This is some fucking bullshit, she said. We’re a fucking embarrassment so I’m gonna embarrass us on the international stage. In 1983 she spoke at the Council of Europe letting them all know that hey women still can’t vote in Liechtenstein isn’t that fucking stupid? And back home they were all shut the fuck up Melitta you’re making us look bad and Melitta said good you should look bad because you are bad fucking give women the vote. And so they did.
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