Campaing for WOmens Rights

Carl Josef-Ian Nuñez Xavier Rendora 28th November 2007

Why did a campaign for women’s suffrage develop in the years after 1870?

During 19th century the right to vote was privileged to men and men only. This was due to a great gap between the social position of men and women, where men always had the upper hand. This division almost rivalled that of the rich and poor. Women were constricted to few rights, and in 1832 a Reform act was passed which saw women formally prohibited from making the vote. It was in this year that women had began re-instating the argument for women’s suffrage as they objected the restriction, but this did not truly develop until the early 1870’s.

John Stuart Mill, an MP for Westminster, was the first person to try and change this during the debates of the second reform act but not much was changed. The years around 1870 saw a few acts passed which granted women more rights, and this would help fuel them for future debates.

Women truly ended up fighting for rights on three fronts before they achieved suffrage. These were at home, in schools and at work. They would push these rights further and further until they proved that they were worthy for the vote.

The main reason that women were not given the vote was because of the superiority of men. Men saw women as unintelligent human beings and even the queen believed that

Education was one of the main factors which would affect the way in which women would gain suffrage; it would also help them be able to get better jobs and have more understanding of the world. Yet there were only few females who had been educated compared to men. During the 17th century it became more and more fashionable for girls to be taught how to read and write with a teacher at their homes, but this was only available to the rich. Schools themselves were mainly for boys.

In 1853 Cheltenham Ladies' College was founded. It was a girl’s school catering to those aged 11 to 18. Its reputation did not grow until 1858 when Dorothea Beale took over as principal and made it a highly reputed school. She wanted girls to be educated academically and not be swayed towards drawing and music as other schools had been. She said, ‘I wish women to be educated not so they can have power over men, but so that they can have power over themselves’, meaning that she wanted women to be able to make their own decisions and become more independent.

Education for women took a further step forward in 1880 when it became compulsory for boys and girls (emphasis on the ‘and’) under the age of ten to be sent to schools. This gave girls the same education as boys and would help them in the future with skills for jobs. This would prove a great move for women, as ten year old from that time would be around the age of 37 in 1907, the perfect age for a suffragette/suffragist when real campaigning for women’s suffrage began, and they would be more intelligent and much more educated then previous campaigners. Superior intelligence of males could no longer be a factor.

At work things were different. By 1961, instead of being more men working in the textile industry, there were more women. Women felt that since they represented such a large amount of the work force that they were entitled to vote since many of them had to strive to be economically independent. But this was mainly in the lower classes of society. Married middle-class women found it hard to work since all of their income would be received by their husbands anyway. Many jobs were also excluded from women since they seen as incompetent and indecisive by men.

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Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Sophia Jex-Blake were both two women who ventured into the world of professional jobs. They both graduated as doctors in 1866, against the thought of many men. This showed that women had enough intelligence to have professional jobs if they were to be given the opportunity.

Seeing that women were now educated and that they had the ability to handle professional jobs, it was almost impossible to not get the vote, as the argument for suffrage grew towards women. All that was left to do was to become untied from the grip of the restless men who did not want them to vote. This would include their own husbands.

The Married Women’s Property Act of both 1870 and 1882 gave women more rights in the home. The Married Women's Property Act's (1870) long title was "An Act to amend the law relating to the property of married women". The most important sections of the act were:

1. The wages and earning made by a woman were to be held by her for own separate use independently from her husband. The meaning of wages included money made from any employment, occupation, or trade, or the use of any skill such as a literary, scientific, or artistic skill that resulted in money being made. This section also covered investments made with the money earned.

7. This section dealt mostly with inheritance of property. A woman was allowed to keep any property she inherited from her next of kin as her own subject to that property not being bound in a trust. She could also inherit money up to £200.

8. This section allowed a woman to continue to hold rented property in her own name and to inherit rented property.

14. This section made married women liable to maintain her children from the profits earned from her personal property. It also continued the liability of the husband to maintain his children. In effect, this section made both parents legally liable while each spouse held separate property. (1)

The Married Women’s Property Act of 1882 allowed women to buy, sell and own property as unmarried women did.

All of this made women more confident. They no longer had to look up to their Husbands in their home. They could go out and look for jobs and become more independent. The power or men over women was lessened, and they were able to do what ever they wanted.

All of the aforementioned facts all helped a campaign develop after 1870. The first vote achieved came in 1894 when a law was passed which saw women given the vote in municipal council elections. This made women 15% of the electorate, although it left out married women. But the campaign had only just begun.

Describe the ways in which the methods of the suffragists and the suffragettes were different.

Now that more and more women were beginning to express there feelings about women’s right to vote, groups began to form which would help them to publicise the suffrage movement. The two main groups consisted of the NUWSS (National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies) and the WSPU (Women’s Social and Political Union). These two groups had both been in partnership until 1903, when they suffered a split. This segregated the two groups into two categories: The Suffragists (NUWSS) and the Suffragettes (WSPU).

Both these groups of course fought for the same cause of women’s suffrage, yet they used different tactics. The Suffragists started the campaign and used non-violent means of protest. They were led by Mrs. Millicent Fawcett who believed in moderate, peaceful persuasion, and constitutional methods.

The Suffragettes were the opposite type of campaigners to the Suffragists. They did not believe in the actions of the Suffragists and felt that the only way to get the governments attentions truly were to take on militant tactics. They were frustrated at the slow pace of the Suffragist and this resulted in the use of violence to express their feelings.

By 1905 the media had lost interest in the struggle for women's rights. Newspapers rarely reported meetings and usually refused to publish articles and letters written by supporters of women's suffrage. In 1905 the WSPU decided to use different methods to obtain the publicity they thought would be needed in order to obtain the vote.

Women over 30 gained the vote in 1918 mainly because of women’s contribution to the war effort. Do you agree with this view? Explain your answer.

I agree with this statement. Although many other factors affected this I feel that the war was the main reason. During the war many women served in the armed serves and helped the country to survive.

It was only 2 days after the war was declared that the NUWSS declared that they would stop all political activities to help and contribute to the war. 4 days later the WSPU decided to stop their militant actions also. Now both suffragettes and suffragists were halting their campaigns. Only one other big group – The Women’s Freedom league - continued campaigning. The main thinking behind the withdrawal of campaigning was that they could show themselves worthy of citizenship and the other quite bland reason that there would be no good in the vote without a country to vote in.

Women, such as Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughter Christabel Pankhurst, made speeches telling women to commit themselves to the war. They also helped to recruit young men to fight for their country. Just as they had rallied women to fight for the vote, they were now rallying men to fight for the greater good.

The main increase influx of women employed came when conscription was introduced in 1916, now all able men had to join the army to help fight the war. This led to a decrease of men available to work in Great Britain. Only the old, disabled and young males were left, so it was clear that women were now needed to work. The result of this increasing demand, there was an increase of 1.6 million in the number of women employed in Great Britain.

As the need for new industries grew, more and more employers were willing to let women work in their factories. Any sort of job where hard labour was involved many employers looked to women. Places such as ammunition factories, which were a necessity during war time, now began employing women even though previously they had been forbidden to work there. Women were responding immediately to the needs of their country.

Women now worked on buses, trams, as clerical workers and in ammunition factories. The highest rise was in engineering. 1,000,000 women had been mobilized into munitions, 14,000 in auxiliary corps working with soldiers, 90,000 in clerical works, and 30,000 into farming.

Farming was an extremely important factor as without farmers Great Britain would have become scarce of food. The submarine blockade stopped people from importing foods, so Great Britain became reliant on its own resources. These women were the main reason that the people of Britain did not starve.

Women had also helped to keep dying trades, which were collapsing under the pressure of war, running. The Queen’s Work for Women Fund, helped women to secure jobs in luxury trades which were running dry on employees. This meant that 130 firms were able to stay running thanks to their help.

The role of women during the war was extremely important. Great Britain realized that the war could not be won simply by merely sending splendid fighters to the front and then sending more when they had died. Instead it set up an efficient system of industry on their home soil, which was mainly made up of the women of Great Britain. Women proved themselves to the men of Britain that they could stand up to jobs given to them and could work just as well. They gained respect from men which, although should already of been there, was well earned.

After the war many people saw that women could actually do a good job in society instead of just being housewives. Scotland Yard had seen the work of Miss Damer Dawson and her Women Police Service, and now began calling on women as reliable forces.

So in 1918 the Representation of the People Act was passed meaning that women over the age of thirty were now eligible to vote. Although this meant that not all women could vote, it was still a big start. The vote for the Act was passed overwhelmingly in the House of Commons, as 385 voted for votes for women, a big change from previous bills and acts. This showed that the contribution that women made during the war had impressed many people and that this was their ‘reward’. The number of women who could vote suddenly went from 0 to 8.4 million, a victory for many women.

Although I do believe that the war was the main factor in women gaining the vote, they would not have earned it had there not been campaigns for it before. In France millions of women worked to help their country going just as much as the women in Britain, but they did not get the vote. This was most probably because the women of France had not committed themselves to any pre-war suffrage movements. The people of France had not experienced the violence of the suffragists or the constant protests of many women. But the British had.

It is argued that after the war the British did not want to return to the violence of pre-1914 and that the vote was given to them to try and stop it from happening once more. The British did not know where continued intense campaigns would take the country, and they did not want to risk further turmoil especially after the experiences of war. So they gave the vote to women over 30 to try and ease the pressure, which could have come.

Many MP’s felt that it was inevitable that some sort of reform was going to be passed. Passing the act would mean that any further change, like full equality, could be delayed further but the suffragettes would still be happy. Many even thought that full equality could therefore be left alone for another 30 years.

Women earned an equal vote 10 years later in 1928.