Several women from Mainz also joined the women's suffrage movement early on. In 1907, for example, a local branch of the Association for Women's Suffrage was established. Founded in Hamburg in 1902 by the well-known women's rights activist Dr. Anita Augspurg, this association represented one of the progressive currents of the suffrage movement with its demand for democratic voting rights for women and men. Leading representatives of the Mainz local group were the teacher and later city councilor Lina Bucksath and Emma Nägeli, who originally came from Munich and was active in many women's organizations in Mainz. Both women were also involved in the Hessian State Association for Women's Suffrage, which brought together local groups from Darmstadt, Mainz, Nauheim, and Worms. With 104 members, the Mainz group was the largest in the Hessian State Association. All four Hessian local groups together had 270 members. In addition, the Social Democrats fought their own political battle for suffrage. At least they had the certainty that, since the party conference decision in 1891, their demand had official support within the SPD.

Like all groups in the women's suffrage movement, the Mainz women also invited people to group evenings and public events in order to awaken or strengthen women's interest in politics. A lecture evening organized by the Association for Women's Suffrage on December 6, 1912, at the Mainz Liedertafel became the talk of the town. A representative of the English suffragettes was invited. However, her descriptions of the much more radical struggle of English women met with little approval from the audience of around 100 people. The women of Mainz, like the women's suffrage movement in Germany as a whole, relied on appeals and petitions to achieve their goal.

Public relations work for women's suffrage in Mainz – this included a strong political focus on voting rights at the municipal level and also giving women access to positions in the city administration. In 1910, Mainz was one of the first cities in Germany to introduce the position of police assistant and appointed Klara Schapiro to the post. The women of Mainz found another field of activity in the reform of the municipal code for the Grand Duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt. In a joint campaign, the Hessian women's associations succeeded in bringing about a change. As a result, from 1911 onwards, women in the Grand Duchy could be elected as voting members of committees (then known as deputations) for poverty relief, education and training, health care, and hospitals. They did not have to fulfill the election requirements that generally applied to men.

This would have meant that a quarter of the committee seats in Mainz could have been filled by women, but the male majority in the city council could not bring themselves to agree to this. In March 1918, an alliance of 21 women's organizations sent an open letter to Mayor Göttelmann and the 49 city councilors to draw attention to the fact that only eight women had been appointed to the deputations, while in Offenbach 19 women had been elected and in Darmstadt as many as 21.

However, neither Mayor Göttelmann nor the Mainz city councilors were in a hurry to respond. By mid-October 1918, the gentlemen had not found the time to deal with the women's petition. They no longer needed to, because a month later, the six men on the Council of People's Representatives decided for them.

The women of Mainz were able to exercise their right to vote three times in 1919. The first time was on January 19, 1919, in the election for the Constituent National Assembly, the second time on January 26, 1919, in the election for the Constituent Hessian People's Chamber, and then on November 9, 1919, in the election for the City Council. And they did indeed make active use of their new right. On January 19, 1919, around 90 percent of eligible voters in Mainz went to the polls – and the women were in no way inferior to the men.

Voting was one thing, but getting elected was more difficult. Of the 188 people who stood for election to the city council on November 9, 1919, for example, only 23 were women. In the end, three women were elected: Lina Bucksath for the German Democratic Party (DDP), Martha Seering for the SPD, and Elisabeth Schiffmacher for the Center Party. At least they were lucky enough to be relatively high up on their parties' electoral lists. Most female candidates had to settle for lower places on the lists. During the Weimar Republic, there were only three, at most four, female city councilors. By 1933, women's entry into local politics had already come to an end. The National Socialists only tolerated "councilmen."

Even in the first local elections after the end of Nazi rule in 1946, only three women managed to get into the city council. It was not until the local elections in the 1990s that women reached a relevant share of 40 percent. But even this share is not set in stone, as later elections have shown.

More information on women's issues in Mainz local politics can be found in the accompanying brochure to the exhibition "90 Years of Women's Suffrage: Women in Mainz City Council," published in 2009.

The brochure published by the Working Group of Municipal Women's and Equal Opportunities Officers deals with 100 years of women's suffrage at the municipal level in Rhineland-Palatinate.

The brochure provides informative details about local politics for interested women in Mainz: