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    The Battle For Women's Suffrage

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    Spirit Stallion
    Jeremy Bentham first called for women's suffrage in Britain in 1818. The campaign gained momentum in the late 19th century with the formation of women's suffrage societies. Early arguments for women's suffrage were rejected on the basis that women were less able than men and their place was in the home. The suffragettes, led by Emmeline Pankhurst, utilized more militant tactics like protests, hunger strikes, and property damage to raise awareness of the issue. World War I bolstered support as women took on new roles, and the Representation of People Act of 1918 granted some women the right to vote. Universal suffrage was not achieved until 1928.

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    The Battle For Women's Suffrage

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    Spirit Stallion
    26 views3 pages
    Jeremy Bentham first called for women's suffrage in Britain in 1818. The campaign gained momentum in the late 19th century with the formation of women's suffrage societies. Early arguments for women's suffrage were rejected on the basis that women were less able than men and their place was in the home. The suffragettes, led by Emmeline Pankhurst, utilized more militant tactics like protests, hunger strikes, and property damage to raise awareness of the issue. World War I bolstered support as women took on new roles, and the Representation of People Act of 1918 granted some women the right to vote. Universal suffrage was not achieved until 1928.

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    The battle for women's suffrage

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    Jeremy Bentham first called for women's suffrage in Britain in 1818. The campaign gained momentum in the late 19th century with the formation of women's suffrage societies. Early arguments for women's suffrage were rejected on the basis that women were less able than men and their place was in the home. The suffragettes, led by Emmeline Pankhurst, utilized more militant tactics like protests, hunger strikes, and property damage to raise awareness of the issue. World War I bolstered support as women took on new roles, and the Representation of People Act of 1918 granted some women the right to vote. Universal suffrage was not achieved until 1928.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    26 views3 pages

    The Battle For Women's Suffrage

    Uploaded by

    Spirit Stallion
    Jeremy Bentham first called for women's suffrage in Britain in 1818. The campaign gained momentum in the late 19th century with the formation of women's suffrage societies. Early arguments for women's suffrage were rejected on the basis that women were less able than men and their place was in the home. The suffragettes, led by Emmeline Pankhurst, utilized more militant tactics like protests, hunger strikes, and property damage to raise awareness of the issue. World War I bolstered support as women took on new roles, and the Representation of People Act of 1918 granted some women the right to vote. Universal suffrage was not achieved until 1928.

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    Who first called for women’s votes?

     In Britain from the early 19th century


     In 1818, in his Plan of Parliamentary Reform, Jeremy Bentham insisted that women should
    be given the vote
     Women at the time had no political rights at all but then nor did most men: the Great Reform
    Act of 1832 increased the electorate
     The radical MP Henry "Orator" Hunt presented Parliament with a petition drawn up by
    Mary Smith, a rich Yorkshire woman, arguing that unmarried women who owned property
    and paid taxes should be allowed to vote
    When did the campaign really get going?
     Until the second half of the 19th century that the first campaigning women's groups
     They focused on the lack of education, employment opportunities and legal rights for
    women (married women, at the time, had no independent legal standing); a recognition of
    women's rights so improving women's lives
     In 1867, Barbara Bodichon and others formed the London Society for Women's Suffrage
     In 1897, the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), led by Millicent
    Garrett Fawcett, was formed
    How were their arguments received?
     The philosopher and MP Johnm Stuart Mill, a proponent of sexual equality, tabled an
    amendment to the 1867 Reform Bill, calling for all householders, regardless of sex, to be
    enfranchised
     The Reform Acts of 1867 and 1884 had enabled 40%, then about 60%, of men to vote
     Motions were debated in Parliament throughout the 1870s but they were defeated
     Women were mentally less able than men; their "natural sphere" was in the home; they were
    unable to fight for their country, and thus undeserving of full rights; they simply didn't want
    the vote
     "I have never felt the want of a vote," declared Florence Nightingale in 1867, while Queen
    Victoria condemned the "mad, wicked folly of women's rights”.
     Even George Eliot was reluctant to back the cause
    What about the suffragettes?
     In 1903, the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) was formed in Manchester by
    Emmeline Pankhurst and other campaigners frustrated by the slow progress of the NUWSS's
    suffragists
     In 1905, Christabel Pankhurst (Emmeline's daughter) and Annie Kenney repeatedly shouted
    over a speech by the MP Sir Edward Grey, asking "Will the Liberal government give votes
    to women?"
     They assaulted police officers when asked to leave and were arrested. A series of mass
    processions followed, more than 250,000 women protested in Hyde Park in 1908, shocking
    Edwardian England
     The term "suffragettes" was initially coined as a pejorative by the Daily Mail
    How effective were their protests?
     Most historians agree that the suffragettes were initially very effective in mobilising women
    and highlighting injustices
     Many were arrested and ill-treated; prisoners who went on hunger strike were brutally force-
    fed; over time they became steadily more militant
     The PM. Herbert Asquith, an opponent of women's votes, was attacked with a dog whip,
    Mary Richardson slashed Velàzquez's Rokeby Venus in the National Gallery, Emily Wilding
    Davison threw herself under the King's horse on Derby Day 1913 and was killed
     The use of violence was thought to have been detrimental
     Their cause has marched backwards declared Winston Churchill, a recent convert to
    women's suffrage
    What was it that finally brought about reform?
     The First World War: even before that, there was a Commons majority for changing the law,
    but never sufficient government will
     The sacrifices of the War bolstered support for widening the franchise generally: suffragists
    and suffragettes suspended campaigning
     More than a million women were newly employed outside the home and suffrage had long
    been based on occupational status: Asquith was replaced as PM by David Lloyd George, a
    supporter of votes for women
     The Representation of the People Act 1918 was introduced by the coalition government and
    passed by a majority of 385 to 55, gaining the Royal Assent on 6 February 1918
     Women over 30 who were householders or married to one, or university graduates, were
    given the vote along with nearly all men over 21
    When could all women vote?
     The 1918 Act was a victory for the gradualist approach of Fawcett's NUWSS: limiting the
    female vote by age and class soothed concerns that men would become an electoral minority
     It took another ten years before truly universal suffrage was introduced: the Equal Franchise
    Act of 1928; the NUWSS again played an instrumental role (it was dissolved in 1917)
     Fawcett noted in her diary that it was 61 years since she had heard Mill's proposed
    amendment to the 1867 Reform Bill
     "So I have had extraordinary good luck in having seen the struggle from the beginning."
    First movers and late adopters
     New Zealand became the first country in the world to give women the vote, in 1893
     This was thanks to the efforts of suffragists led by Kate Sheppard and to the support of many
    of the self-governing colony's leading male politicians
     Australia followed in 1902 (indigenous Australians were not allowed to vote until 1962)
     The first women to vote in Europe were in Finland, in 1906, then an autonomous part of the
    Russian Empire, but with a long tradition of women's rights
     Norway followed in 1913, Denmark in 1915, Germany and Austria in 1918
     In 1920 white women in the USA were given the vote
     In Spain, female suffrage was introduced in 1931: during Franco's dictatorial regime
     Female suffrage came late to France in 1944, after the liberation
     In Switzerland, one of the oldest democracies in the world, women couldn't cast a vote until
    1971; this is a feature of the country's direct democracy: constitutional changes are effected
    by referendum, not by legislators. Since the 1880s, Swiss women had repeatedly asked male
    voters to give them the vote. The men kept saying no.

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