Source based questions - Representation of the People Act 1918 - women given the right to vote and to stand for parliament

        Source H on the other hand seems to be occupying completely the opposite point of view. It states: “A very simplified view would see the vote as a reward for loyal wartime service. However, careful study shows how little changed resulted from the war, not how much”, since this source comes directly from a history book, a book that would have been based on wide research and unbiased views, we would expect this source to be reliable and fair. Source H presents a view that the work that women did during the war really did not matter very much in the minds of the people of the time, in fact, many men resented the work that the women had done during the war. Many of the women who had occupied these jobs had become quite skilful at them, as would be expected after such a long time, however, after returning home from the war, men who had always held these jobs were reinstated into them and the women who had come to cherish these jobs as an escape from the inequality and prejudice held over them were evicted with absolutely no qualms whatsoever by those in charge showing that there was a distinct ungratefulness felt by many about the work that the women had done during the war. Many men feared that women would take over the work place and put them out of their jobs so a animosity, tension and resentment began to form between these men who worried over their livelihoods and the women who were pushed aside out the first opportunity to return to a way a life they thought had been left behind at the beginning of the First World War. This would further confirm the point that Source H is trying to make: that women received the vote after the war was due to the fact that it was they who had raised the soldiers who had fought in the war and this was seen as a loyal service for their country, not the work they did for the country during the war, this is an example of exactly how entrenched preconceptions about women where. The source suggests that the vote was given to women as a reward for what was seen as their loyal service to the country in raising the younger generation of fighting men: we can see this from quotes such as, “Politicians themselves agreed with the idea that the women who had brought up children successfully had performed a service for the government which could be rewarded by giving the vote to such loyal citizens”.

        When the vote finally was awarded to women at the end of the First World War it was awarded to women over the age of 30, this voting age restriction was agreed by politicians because women over this age where seen to be more sensible and where likely to vote the same way as their husbands, meaning that the general trend of voting would continue in much the same way even after women receiving the vote, consolidating the power held by the current government. The women under 30 who had actually performed the hard labour such as working in the munitions factories – the work that was considered valuable to the war effort – where not allowed to vote and this would seem to confirm the views that source H is presenting, that the work the women did in the war was not a factor that greatly contributed to their winning the vote: if it had been it would make sense to assume that the vote would have been awarded to the poorer, working class, women who had contributed a great deal to the war effort, rather than the more ‘respectable’ women who had not contributed as much.

        It is also debateable whether women would have received the vote had it not been for the fact that men in the armed forces had lost their franchise under the residential qualification. This means that in order to vote men had to have a permanent address, as most men had been away fighting in the war they had lost this permanent address and had therefore lost the right to vote, this situation needed to be address urgently. Since the law was going to have to be amended to allow these men to vote it was a relatively simple task to include new laws on women’s votes and so the Representation of the People Act 1918 was created. If this hadn’t been the case women may not have won the vote so easily after the war at all.

        Source I implies that it was a number of factors that contributed to women winning the vote, however, it also shows that the work done by women during the war was an important one of these factors, stating: “To say the war brought votes for women is to make a very rough generalisation, yet one which contains some truth”. This source is stating that the success of women’s suffrage can be attributed to no one thing, the contribution made by women during the war is part of the story in which women won the vote but certainly not the entire story, the campaign carried out before the war on behalf of the suffragettes was also an important factor that must be considered carefully. 

        This source tell us that it was not simply the work done during the war by women, or even that it was this as well as the suffragette campaign before it, that, much of the fact that women received the vote soon after the war ended was because, due to the war, the views and the way that people thought in this country had been altered: “During the four years of conflict a tremendous mood favourable to change had been created”. This implies that a new way of thinking, created by the war, was the deciding factor in women winning the vote at the end of the war. The source also points out that “the question of women’s rights must not be isolated from the other great social and political changes that were happening as a result of the war”, it is pointing out that women’s rights was not the only upheaval happening at this time, due to the immense change in peoples attitudes because of the war great changes were happening all around the country concerning previously held preconceptions and stereotypes, and that the renewed interest for women’s rights was just one of these. Source I implies that it wasn’t just the work carried out by women during the war, although this was a factor, it was the actuality that the entire mood in the country had changed at this time, peoples views had been altered by what the war had created and this allowed women to create new views of themselves in the eyes of people, to ingratiate themselves into these new views in a positive way.

        In conclusion I think that it is only fair to say that in the case of the statement shown above the fact that women were awarded the vote soon after the war is not simply due to a single factor but to a multitude of factors including the suffragette campaign, the war work and a change in the attitudes and preconceptions held by those in Britain. However, it is also safe to say that, because of the fact that only a very limited spread of women in the country received the vote, much of the stereotyping and prejudgment of women had yet to be broken down before women could truly be seen as equals in the eyes of many.