Votes for women

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Bharat Patel 10N                Votes For Women 1900-1928

History Votes for Women.

1) Source A depicts pictorially a list of positive roles a woman could have at the time and a list of negative things a man could have been. It shows that while a woman could be a respected member of society she was still not allowed to vote, whereas a man could be a criminal or unfit in the eyes of society yet still have the vote. The poster is a peaceful means of protest, yet quite crude in the way it is presented, for example it contains bold drawings of a “drunkard” and “proprietor of white slaves”. Other pictures, such as those of a “lunatic” and one “unfit for service” were compared directly above to possible female positions of a “nurse” and “doctor or teacher” respectively. These are the closest opposites in roles that existed at the time so are effective in comparison. The main implication of the picture is that a man could vote whatever his stature, be it worthless or not, but a woman could not either way. The poster is a useful source as it shows the law of the time, 1912, that all men could vote no matter what they had been but women could not. This was unjust from the women’s point of view and added to their frustration at not being allowed the vote. The designers of the poster used it to illustrate the double standards employed by the Government.

The main motive for not having votes for women was that women were seen as unskilled and unintelligent. They were not given the vote due to the fact that they were seen as not politically minded or interested and so they would not be able to use their vote to its full potential. The point of source A is that it shows you that a Lunatic or a drunkard wouldn’t be able to vote appropriately  and yet still could vote where intelligent responsible women couldn’t. Women found this very unjust as Parliament consisted entirely of men, elected by men to pass laws to benefit men. Women wanted a change and so the poster of Source A was drawn to get their message across.

2) In some ways the evidence from source b does support source c about the suffragette campaign, such as in source b Lloyd George says “the worst way of campaigning is to try and intimidate or black mail” , this obviously means that using violent protesting is not the right way of putting your argument forward. In source c it shows a picture of two women, the one on the right is a suffragette. We see them both in front of a liberals meeting building. The caption says “the shrieking sister”, the person on the left is described as the “sensible women” the thing that she says is “you help our cause? Why you’re its worst enemy! “The quotation why you’re its worst enemy shows that the artist supports women suffrage but again not in a violent way. It shows that he supports and believes that the way to protest is through peacefully we can see this as the suffragist looks calm and dignified while it’s the suffragette is drawn as looking hysterical and out of control means and obviously supports the suffragists. The other way we can tell that the artist hates suffragettes is the way he has drawn them, he draws the suffragists as an high class women and he draws the suffragette as a lower class women.

Source C is a cartoon by Bernard Partridge drawn in 1906 of two female suffrage campaigners. One is a Suffragist, meaning a member of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (who campaigned using peaceful methods) and the other is a Suffragette, a member of the Women’s Social and Political Union, which was a more militant organization that used violence in their protest. The caption reads, “The Shrieking Sister,” and the implication of the picture is that the Suffragettes only made the campaign situation worse for both groups by being uncivilized. They were effectively undermining the actions of the Suffragists by their behavior. The evidence taken from Source C is that the movement was split, therefore not working as efficiently as it might. The artist is more likely to be correct in this observation as the artist is a man; therefore his opinion is derived from watching both groups’ tactics from a distance, as opposed to campaigning with them, and making a final judgment. Source B doesn’t support the suffragette as he doesn’t want to give into violence. Whereas source C seems to be against the suffragettes as he seems to think they make woman looks irrational and emotional the very reason many men thought women should not get the vote. Also B and C support each other as they both might be considered unfair arguments. Source B is a speech in parliament, of course in public Lloyd George cannot say the suffragette feel differently. Similarly as source C is a cartoon but its very nature it is exaggerated. Clearly not all the suffragettes were the hysterical looking old women in the cartoon.

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Overall in conclusion I think that source b does support the evidence of source c about the suffragette campaign because they both are showing it’s wrong to violently protest, also they both tell us that if you was too protest in a violent way you won’t get anywhere.

3) Despite the Suffrage activity before 1914, women had not been given the vote by the outbreak of the First World War.  This was a surprise to the Suffragettes, as they believed that suffrage activity would have won them the right to vote before the outbreak of the First World War. ...

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