The Suffragettes - source related questions.

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Laura Unite 11G         Votes for Women Coursework

                        

  1. What can you learn from source A about the reasons given by the Suffragettes for demanding votes for women (6)?

From source A we can suggest that although women were permitted to have important jobs within society, such as nurses, teachers and mayors, they still believed they deserved the right to vote, because men who were convicts, lunatics and proprietors of white slaves had the vote. From source A we can infer that the men, despite allowing women to have these important jobs, were being unfair by not allowing women to help decide how the country is being run. This is because men believed women only cared about unimportant subjects like clothes and flowers.

  1. Study sources B and C. Does source B support the evidence of source C about the Suffragette campaign? Explain your answer.

Source B supports source C in that they both suggest that violence should not be used to convince the male-ran government that they deserve the vote. Both sources are written by people who are against women’s suffrage, therefore they are biased. However, source B then goes on not to support source C as it suggests that ‘women were and are destined to make voters rather than to be voters themselves.’ From this we can suggest that men, despite the fact that source B was written by a woman, believed that a woman’s role in society was to remain in the home and raise the husbands children, rather than to meddle in politics. Marie Corelli, who wrote the extract in source B, taken from her book ‘Women or Suffragette’ in 1907, then goes on to admit that ‘women suffer great injustice at the hands of men,’ but this is due to the way ‘mothers have reared their sons and still continue to rear them.’ This, therefore, goes against source C’s suggestion. From source B we can infer that men are looking for someone to blame for their actions towards women, but not necessarily because they felt it was wrong. From source C we can infer that using violence to gain the vote could jeopardise women from getting the vote altogether, ‘YOU help our cause? Why, you’re it’s worst enemy!’, as said by a Suffragist in the 1906 cartoon by Bernard Partridge. This is supported by source B, which says, ‘votes for women’ is the shrill cry of discontented ladies.’

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  1. Study sources D and E and use your own knowledge. Why despite the Suffragette campaign, had women not gained the vote by the outbreak of the First World War?

According to sources D and E, there are many reasons why women had not gained the vote by the outbreak of the First World War, despite the Suffragette movement.

Source D suggests that the reason why women didn’t get the vote was that the government did not give it to them. This was for a number of reasons. Firstly, the Prime Minister ...

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