Med religion som verktyg : En diskursanalys av religiösa referenser inom Landsföreningen för kvinnans politiska rösträtt under år 1900-1919 i Sverige

Sammanfattning: This essay studies how religiosity is formulated and discussed within the women´s suffrage movement, LKPR, in Sweden during the early 1900s. I have studied articles in journals written by central actors in the organization and applied a discourse analysis. This era in Sweden is characterized by political turbulence, and an increasing questioning of the Church of Sweden and how its doctrine is used by the state to legitimize a patriarchal social structure. I have also applied the “gender contract” as a theoretical perspective to show how the gender roles within the Church of Sweden not only created a framework for the women to stand within, but also to elucidate these actors’ approaches to these conditions and the complex situation they were in during the conflict where they were torn between state law, church frameworks and the dream of liberation. The work illustrates how voting rights activists used religion in their rhetoric to, among other things, call for activism, legitimize the political issue and demonstrate past values ​​depending on your gender and the roles you were thus assigned. With emotions such as love, despair, frustration and hope formulated in the scriptures, religion became one of the organization's tools in the political project.