Teacher, senator, martyr: Remembering women’s rights champion Františka Plamínková, born 150 years ago
On February 5th 1875, Františka Plamínková was born, a woman who would go on to dedicate her life to political causes, most notably the rights of women in Czechoslovakia. Tragically, this activism culminated in her execution by the Nazis in 1942.
Františka Plamínková, it is safe to say, lived through great changes and turbulent times for the Czech nation. Born in Prague, a city of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, she trained to be a teacher and became qualified to teach drawing, mathematics, physics and writing in 1900. Teaching was a common and respected profession for women at that time, but one that came with a personal cost.
One of the laws dictated by Vienna was that female teachers had to remain celibate; marriage meant the end of a woman’s career in education. Repealing this law and other laws that discriminated against women became Plamínková’s life-long mission, and her efforts formed part of the international move to give women the right to vote in democratic countries.
Plamínková is remembered today not only for what she achieved, but also for who she inspired. In 1903, when she was 28 (and still unmarried, unwilling to give up her career), she founded the Czech Women’s Club (Ženský Klub Český), to united various women’s groups to fight for changes in legislation and society. This brought her into contact with Charlotte Garrigue Masaryk, wife of Czechoslovakia’s first president, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk. The two women became good friends, and Plamínková remained close to the Masaryks for the rest of her life. President Masaryk shared her feminist views, and female suffrage was even written into the ‘Washington Declaration’, which established an independent Czechoslovakia in 1918.
Within the new country, Plamínková was made a senator in 1925, and held the position until the dissolution and occupation of the Second Czechoslovak Republic in 1939. She was succeeded in that senatorial position by her long-time colleague, Milada Horáková.
Horáková’s execution by the post-war Communist state is well known, but Plamínková also met a similar fate under a different regime. As she continued to promote Czech national causes under Nazi occupation, she was arrested twice by the Gestapo. The second time, in 1942, she was imprisoned in Terezín, and on June 30th that year, she was executed at the Kobylisy Shooting Range. She was sixty-seven years old, and left behind a legacy of courage and a career of tireless campaigning for the freedoms of Czechoslovak women.
Find a full profile of Františka Plamínková here
