Anna Chlebounová

Anna Chlebounová (8 December 1875 – 14 March 1946) was a Czech politician. In 1920, she was one of the first group of women elected to the Chamber of Deputies of Czechoslovakia, remaining in parliament until 1935.

Biography Chlebounová was born Anna Burešová in Bučina in 1875. She had an elder sister called Filomena, who her mother had given birth to while unmarried. Her mother was a Catholic and converted to Evangelicalism on her marriage in 1871, which angered her family.

Following the independence of Czechoslovakia at the end of World War I, Chlebounová was a member of the from 1918 to 1920 for the Republican Party of Farmers and Peasants (Agrarian Party). In 1920 she was a candidate for the party (now renamed the Republican Party of the Czechoslovak Countryside) for the Chamber of Deputies in the parliamentary elections, and was one of sixteen women elected to parliament. She continued to wear a headscarf, which she saw a symbol of rural women. With parliamentarians having the right to first class rail travel, her presence in the first class carriage was regularly challenged by people not realising she was a member of the Chamber of Deputies. She was re-elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1925 and was then elected to the Senate in 1929, serving until 1935, when she retired for health reasons.

Chlebounová died in Džbánov in 1946.