5. Study sources H, I and J and use your own knowledge.
‘It was the work that women did during the war that earned them the vote’
Use the sources and your own knowledge, to explain whether you agree with this interpretation.
I both agree and disagree with the interpretation. War work was one of the reasons that women did get the vote, but it was one reason out of many that helped women finally gain the vote 1918.
Source H seems to disagree with the interpretation. It suggest that saying that it was the contributions of women to the war effort alone that got them the vote is a very simplified view, as far less change had resulted from the war than it had seemed. It suggests that where was a lot of propaganda that seemed to show women in work being received with a warm welcome, but in fact the case was not so and women were ‘greatly resented’. It suggests that most men felt this too, and would rather women worked as nurses and brought up the future ‘fighting men’. It even suggests that politicians agreed with this too, and that women were purely given the vote because the government felt that they had indeed ‘performed’ a service for the government’ by bringing up their children successfully, and that purely because of this, such ‘loyal citizens’ should be given the vote. This was not all, however, as an age limit of 30 was set to make sure that the ‘sensible’ women who were ‘more likely to vote the same way as their husbands’, this in fact was probably true, as another guideline was that they had to be married to a householder to be entitled to vote.
