The SDF's understanding of the woman question made a virtue out of the political vacuum it created around women. In particular, the notion that issues associated with the woman question were matters of conscience allowed all sorts of assumptions about women to gain credibility within the SDF. Views which stereotyped and denigrated women appeared alongside pleas for toleration and positive images of women's capabilities. To say the least, this gave a contradictory and confusing picture of the party to existing and potential women members.

Women as a problem for socialism

Within the SDF, just as outside it, women as a sex were generalised about in a way which was never done for men. The male sex was not dealt with as an undifferentiated mass; it was distinguished through a variety of categories such as class, trade and political conviction. The same rarely applied to women. As a sex, they were seen by SDFers as a reactionary force in society. There was disagreement as to whether women were naturally or socially conditioned to be conservative, but there was a general fear that they constituted a threat to socialism. This was sometimes voiced in terms of women's presumed reactionary influence in municipal elections, but it was more commonly expressed as a general belief in women's ‘indifference, ignorance and apathy’.

The assumed conservatism of women took two forms: one based on apathy with conservatism as its result and another rather more active conservatism where women's influence prohibited or limited the participation of others in socialist politics.