Moterų teisių raida Lietuvoje

The equality of women in Lithuania is an important question of law, history, sociology, politics and other science, which, even though is investigated by all these sciences in different aspects, has quite a few common points. The purpose of this article is to touch the development of the establishment of equality of women in politics from the legal point of view, it is also aimed to reveal some important historical facts which determined the recognition and constitutional consolidation of women suffrage, one of the essential political rights of women. In the article, the author tries to note some historical facts about Lithuania and she states that women suffrage was recognized earlier in Lithuania than in most European states, it is linked to the decision of the Great Seimas of Vilnius of 1905. While construing the recognition of such right as far back as in 1905 the attention is drawn to the fact that the aim of the recognition of political rights of women was coincident with the general efforts to restore the statehood and is to be assessed as an integral part of the development of the democratic state. In the article, various constitutional and legal aspects of the suffrage and the activity of the first female members of the parliament while proposing draft Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania of 1922 and laws are analysed. Even though the main emphasis of the article is the recognition of women suffrage and its implementation at the beginning of the 20th century, in the opinion of the author, while analysing the development of women suffrage in the legal aspect, one must pay heed to the exceptional significance of the Statutes of Lithuania (1529, 1566, 1588) to the development of women suffrage. In the article some contemporary tendencies of the development of women suffrage are also briefly reviewed.