In Vienna, in 1848, after two months of a republican constitution, a new mutiny allowed liberals to elect a Constituent Assembly. On August 21, 1848, a dramatic salary reduction of female public servants was issued, causing riots in which 18 people died and 282 were injured. On August 28, 1848, the Baroness Karoline von Peron founded the First Association of Democratic Women of Vienna. The association organized a demonstration in front of the Reichstag on October 17th that same year. Three hundred women attended, who along with 1000 signatories, wanted to call for a referendum for women’s labor rights, more equality, and education. The petition and women’s association were considered a preposterous enterprise and were publicly attacked in the press. The harsh criticism parodied the world proposed by women, using sexual cartoons with humiliating scenes of subjugation and others that depicted feminine vengefulness towards men in both the public and the private sphere. Such pamphlets and cartoons envisioned a future where women’s freedom entailed a disaster for masculine society. The movement dissolved due to a lack of social support and the ban on the women’s political association was sealed by the Association Act of 1867, which confined women’s participation in politics to charity and children’s associations.

Voluspa Jarpa’s painting series “The Last Moment of the Democratic Women´s Association”, draws inspiration from a 1848 lithography entitled The Lips of The Democratic Women’s Club. The print included thirteen pornographic scenes, and illustrates the social response to this movement, which reduced women’s democratic and political aspirations to raunchy caricatures that reinforce gender stereotypes.