Votes for women - source related questions.

Votes for women,

c1900-28

Coursework assignment

What can you learn from source A about the reasons given by the suffragettes for demanding votes for women?

Source A, is principally saying that many women are doing good, valuable services for the country and yet do not get a say in the running of it, through voting. On the other hand, men could have been convicts etc who have scrounged off society and have not done their bit for the country, yet they still, however, get to keep their votes. This argument seems fair and just, but in fact, it is severely flawed. The suffragettes have attempted to change the argument from men vs. women into bad vs. good for example mothers vs. proprietors of white slaves, (individuals who employed people but bellow the standard of living- in metaphorical chains); in doing so they have misrepresented both sides and have also been discriminative to people in poor situations.

Women would seldom get to have any job at all, let alone mayors, nurses, doctors or teachers. They would sometimes get to be factory hands and would, of course get to be mothers but the poster is misrepresenting the facts by implying that many women had those sorts of jobs whereas only a few actually did. In addition, the occupations of the men on the posters are misrepresented, women could just as often be the same things, like drunkards and convicts and lunatics. If the poster were to have had numerical information added to it then the arguments would have been much less effective, because the actual situation would be much more apparent.

The range of occupations of the men is very unfair since some of the men cannot help the condition that they are in, for example, lunatics, and being unfit for service. Those people; lunatics and those unfit for service, which are in bad situations, through no fault of their own; are being grouped with people like criminals, who have broken the law been immoral and generally unpleasant, and have chosen to be. This unfair judgement of men in unavoidable situations, i.e. the lunatic, is because the women of this era were products of their times, brought up to believe that being physically or mentally incapable made you a bad person. The suffragettes are thinking in the same way as the people whom they think are discriminating against them, they are grouping all of these occupations together and not considering individual situations. This is a similar situation as that which the government were putting them in with the issue of giving women the vote. A point to note is that the poster would have not been intended for people to analyse the arguments behind it, it was just meant to be seen quickly to trigger the notion in people that the situation of the time was unfair; they were not meant to see the inequality of the argument itself.

Analysing the poster shows that the suffragettes had some good points; women were giving to society through mothering and, on occasions, they were having some of the other occupations mentioned in the poster and yes, they were getting the point across that this work deserved the vote. They had a worthy cause; they were just wrongly representing it by pointing fingers at others who had the vote rather than pointing out solely the good points in themselves and their argument. In my opinion, the basic message the poster is aimed to present (the inequality between the sexes) is a fair one, despite the fact that it has been warped by the suffragette’s presentation of it.

Does source B support the evidence of source C about the suffragette campaign? Explain your answer

Source B is a passage from the book ‘Woman or suffragette’, it was written in 1907 by a woman named Marie Corelli. What this author is saying is that no women are meant to vote, she is also saying that they don’t really need to because it is them that bring up the voting men who, if raised properly would be good people and wouldn’t make women’s’ lives hard. It seems that she is trying to say is that if the suffragettes stayed at home and reared their families properly (rather than gallivanting around) then they would not be in the weak position they are in now. The way that the author suggests that suffragettes are unable to raise families properly is intended to make people think that women would not be able to vote if they cant even do the jobs they already have. When the author says ‘votes for women is the shrill cry of a number of discontented ladies’ she is really suggesting is that that ladies who have full happy lives, those who are contented, perhaps with husbands and families don’t support suffrage because they don’t have any voids to fill in their lives. Therefore, suffragettes must have voids in their lives in order to be discontented; being married or having a man was seen to be what women were intended to do, having this was seen to be all a woman needed to be fulfilled. The reason she may be attributing the suffragettes’ ‘discontented’ nature and their campaigning to is not being able to get a man. In short, she is saying that suffragettes can’t attract men so use the campaigning to fill that void in their lives

The phrase ‘Shrill cry’ is, in itself, an argument against the suffragette campaign, these words are usually used to describe un unpleasant sound such as that which a child would make, saying that it’s the noise that suffragettes are making is regarding them as whining children, not sensible adults. The title of the book also tells us a lot about her opinion of the suffragettes, it is saying that you have to be one or the other; you can’t be a real woman if you are a suffragette, and it somehow takes away you femininity.

The fact that the author is a woman who, in order to write a book must be well educated and well off, tells us that she is not the kind of woman who needs the vote anyway because she gets a say through her position in society. Consequently, she is commenting on a struggle of women that she does not need to be part of and therefore probably cannot understand. Although the whole point of this piece of writing is to say that women are not worthy of the vote, and that they don’t really need it, and that fighting for it is unfeminine and childlike, she herself is a feminist by example because she has a job of her own and so must be well educated and clever. She is, without meaning to, showing all of the qualities that the supporters of suffrage say women have, and should get the vote for.

Source C is a cartoon, titled ‘THE SHRIEKING SISTER’; it was drawn in 1906 by Bernard partridge. It depicts two women, one a suffragette, and one a suffragist outside a liberal meeting; the suffragette is holding a banner saying ‘female suffrage’ the suffragist is saying to the suffragette ‘YOU help our cause? Why, you’re its worst enemy!’ What the cartoonist is implying through what the suffragist is saying is that the suffragettes were doing nothing for the cause. In fact were just making it worse by showing the bad-mannered, violent, and unfeminine side of women.

The way the different women are drawn says a lot about how many people saw the issue of female suffrage. The suffragette in the cartoon is undesirable, messy and looks very lower class, the suffragist on the other hand is well dressed, desirable and richer looking than the suffragette, she is also much more graceful. This source allows us to see how, in many people’s eyes the argument was partly about the class differences although in actuality the two different groups were not so highly divided in terms of class. The source is trying, perhaps to show ...

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This cartoon shows us the types of protest that the suffragettes did, very loud and very high profile in comparison to the suffragists who, as we can see in this source did things in a quieter more distinguished way.

The publication in which the cartoon was printed may have changed the intention of the cartoon, and how the campaign has been presented. For example if the cartoon was published in The Times it would be more likely to be an anti-suffrage one because The Times was government approved. I therefore decided to find out more about the cartoonist. After researching the internet about Bernard partridge I found that Partridge was a cartoonist at a periodical magazine called punch; He held conservative views and was especially harsh on the trade union movement and the Womens Social and Political Union (The suffragettes). Punch was, I found, a satirical magazine based on the outlook of the middle classes. This information now allows me to see that this was published to be an anti suffragette cartoon not perhaps an anti suffrage cartoon because, as the source shows us suffragists were often thought of as being more from the upper classes (The conservative party was mainly a middle/upper class party). Having said this, the author might instead be opposing all female suffrage by showing the different suffrage groups as being divided though after finding the extra information this seems unlikely.

The problem with this source and the other source also being from periodicals is that we cannot be sure whether they are representing the views of the readers (a proportion of the public) and therefore more representative of the wider public opinion. Or, on the other hand whether they are just representing the views of the cartoonist or the publication, trying to change the opinions of the readers, in that case they would be less representative of the wider public and, as a result would be less useful to us as evidence of the suffragette campaign.

To conclude in many ways the two sources are very similar although there are some discrepancies. Both sources say that women are in many ways to blame for the situation, there are a few differences in the ways they say so though. Source B says that women are generally to blame for any injustice against them by the government through by rearing sons the wrong way. C however, says that the situation is made worse by the suffragettes, not women in general. The language used to describe the women in both sources is similar; shrill cry, and shrieking sister. These show how, the suffragettes (in the case of source B), and women in general (in the case of source C) are being childish in their campaign for women’s suffrage (shrieking and shrill are words that might be used to describe children). The sources are the opposite of what we perhaps would have expected. The situation is rather paradoxical since the man is giving a slightly more tolerant opinion, whereas the woman is completely in opposition of the cause, which is meant to help her own sex. Both sources also. Both sources think that there are different ways to campaign or to change the situation, they both, however give varying ways to do so. Source B supports source C by saying that by taking the more womanly, indirect option can get you farther than being violent, using direct protest. Both hint that their must be a reason why suffragettes have time to campaign for suffrage, they cannot get a man or they are letting their family lives deteriorate. Altogether yes, Source B does support C’s evidence.

Study sources D and E and use your own knowledge

Why, despite the suffragette activity, had women not gained the vote by the outbreak of the First World War?

Source D is part of a book titled ‘My Own Story’, it was written in 1912 by Emmeline Pankhurst, it gives her reasons for resorting to violent campaigning. In this source, Emmeline justifies the violence of the suffragettes by saying that this was their last resort because they were not being noticed, or listened to without violence. Violence, we know, did get the suffragettes noticed and, as she says, it made women’s suffrage a matter of news, many more people knew about it. As we know, however the violence, which the suffragettes brought to the women’s suffrage campaign, was not enough to get them the vote, there were around 25 years between the creation of the suffragette movement and the time they got the full voting rights in equality with the men, so violence was not a quick resolution to the situation. The violence did sometimes affect the government but not very much, in many instances this was only a negative impact. The reason that the suffragette campaign was semi effective was that, for a start the government had issues of what they believed to be greater importance to deal with. They had, for example, policy targets to meet concerning the welfare state, like reforms of healthcare and those to prevent poverty.

Then there was also the empire to think of, many countries were starting to want independence and some such as South Africa and British India had already been given some power, the new Union of South Africa had been given domestic self-government in 1910 and limited regional self-government was given to British India in 1909. The countries yet under British power however still needed to be controlled; if they saw suffragettes gaining the vote through violence then they might try the same to get what they wanted, thus causing great financial losses for the country and political losses for the government. Another problem, which would have been caused in the empire, is that respect for Britain’s authority would decrease; giving in to women would seem weak, keeping control over these countries would be made more difficult.

There was much unrest at the time, the trouble in for instance that in Ireland over the British plans to create a semi-independent Ireland, this had to be dealt with. There were already the beginnings of violence in Ireland with two armed forces being created. Non-Catholic Irish threatened force to prevent Britain from forcing them to be part of a semi-independent Ireland. Major violence started to erupt onto the streets on the streets; this was only halted by the outbreak of World War 1, which in its self took up much government time due to the seriousness of the warfare situation.

Another problem was major trade union strikes of miners, dockworkers, and transport workers. They were starting to take to the streets, violently protesting, troops had to be sent out to calm the masses, the situation was worsened by anarchists taking to the streets with them and heightening the violence. These problems were already getting out of hand, giving in to the violence of the suffragettes would have sent the impression that violent protest gets you everything you want, and this would mean that the trouble would escalate until the government had anarchy on their hands

The liberal party were having problems staying in power, in the 1910 by-elections the Conservative party made a massive comeback and from then on they had to concentrate on winning votes, the issue of votes for women would not win votes.

Source E demonstrates another reason why women did not gain the vote by 1914. This source is a statement from a speech given by a member of parliament in 1913. It shows the kind of viewpoint that many people (especially men) had, that even the principal of giving women voting was unthinkable, the MP is suggesting in this speech is that giving women the vote, and consequently power over the country, is utterly foolish.

One reason this MP may have felt this way is due to the stereotypes of women that were implanted into the minds of many ordinary people by society in childhood. Women were thought to be stupid, which, in fact was quite true, they were, because they had not been allowed to be educated. Women were meant to stay at home and occupy their lives with either housework or high society leisure. Thus a vicious circle ensued; they were stupid so were not allowed to be educated, therefore they were stupid.

The fact that Herbert Asquith, the prime minister, hated the whole concept of giving the vote to women would have had a very big effect on some MP’s; they might feel pressured to go along with the opinions of their leader to ‘tow the party line’ as it were. Also the fact that the PM has a large influence on government policies meant that the issue of votes for women was quashed by Asquith many times.

As I mentioned before, there were many good, just reasons why the issue was not discussed more often, there were however many tactics used by MP’s to prevent further discussion of the matter in parliament. For example, they wasted discussion time with invented speeches about issues of no real importance. When these speeches ran in to the time for the votes for women issue no extra time could be allocated for the issue, it is for this reason that the women’s suffrage issue often did not get discussed, it therefore, very often, it was disregarded from policies an reform bills.

There are some other reasons why women did not get the vote by 1914 that are not mentioned in the two sources. To start with, not all the men had the vote; about 1/6 did not have it. There was no way that women would ever have been prioritised above men at this time. The suffragettes as I have mentioned were in many ways too violent, they were dismissed as thugs, the suffragists however were walked over because they weren’t aggressive enough, there was very little middle ground so very often both groups could be dismissed. There was not enough support amongst women for female suffrage and the existence of big anti suffrage groups with mainly women in would have made the government think; what is the point in giving women the vote, if not all of them want to have it anyway.

All of the above are factors that women had to overcome in order to gain the vote, to overcome these factors. Many members of government and people with anti-suffrage views felt that women needed to do something to prove their ‘fitness’ to vote. Pre 1914 women had no real way of proving themselves on mass. Despite the fact that, in some individual cases women managed to prove themselves, individual cases were not enough to change the viewpoint of the nation, or the notion of the government.

How useful are sources F and G as evidence for the contribution of women to the war effort in the years 1914-18?

The two sources, F and G, are very different, but both tell us things about the contribution of women to the war effort. I am going to see to what extent, and in what ways, they show how women helped during the war.

Source F is a poster, produced by the government in 1916. Its heading is ‘Women Munitions Workers Enrol at once’ it is from the time that we are investigating, and so is classed as a primary source. This source tells us that women were welcomed and needed for the war effort. At that time, the government were welcoming women into work with open arms due to the serious lack of young men, who had gone to fight in the war. In order to get women to work, the woman in the source is glamorous, happy and looks quite laid back, this gives women a false impression of the munitions work, which was in reality hard and dangerous. The layout of the poster is similar to that of an army ‘sign up’ poster this might have made the women seeing it equate Munitions work to a female alternative to joining the army. Laying the poster out like this shows women on an equal level as the men, this would appeal to women because it is not being patronising or discriminative towards them.

The background and whole composition of the poster is trying to demonstrate the importance of women to the war. The poster shows the woman superimposed on to a picture of the war, this is showing that her job is vital to the war effort. The background on to which the woman is placed is one of relative peace on the front, (the man in the picture is not fighting but is instead doing an ordinary task) this is so that women do not associate Munitions with killing people; this might put them off doing this work. The fact that this poster has been presented like that leads us to assume that the poster has been purposefully created like that for a purpose. The purpose of this, we can deduce is to encourage more women to sign up. The problem with this source being a primary source, written by the government of the time (who would have been very opinionated on this matter) means that it is most likely to be propaganda on their part. Everything about this poster has been specifically designed to encourage women to enrol to work in munitions and this perhaps is why we cannot rely on it fully for facts about women’s contributions or about the type of life, which they lived during these years.

Another problem about this source is that it gives no numerical facts or details about the other contributions of women in other industries or professions. The fact that the government were advertising for women to work in munitions suggests to us that not enough women were enrolling of their own accord and so a push needed to be made to get more women to join. Therefore, this source could lead us to believe that women did not contribute particularly well during the war years.

Source G, on the other hand is very different, this source is taken from a school textbook published in the 1980’s, and it is therefore a secondary source. This is a numerical source and gives us many details about the different types of employment, which the women were in; it shows us the numbers of women in each industry between July 1914 and July 1918. The industries this source mentions are, metal industries, chemical industries, government offices and food, drink and tobacco. When we study the source, we can see that by the end of the war the numbers of women in every industry mentioned had increased. We can see that the largest increase in one of the individual industry was in metal industries. We can almost certainly attribute this to the war since the war caused a dramatic increase in the demand for weapons and ammunition (made by this industry), for this reason many women who would never have been able to have jobs in this line of work were called upon to take up such work, for example, in munitions. Consequently, the number of women in this industry exploded.

There are, however problems with this source. One of the problems of this source is that it is too numerical; we know nothing else for example, about the motivation of women working, whether it was down to the war or whether it was down to other factors, such as changing attitudes towards women. We have to assume that the increase was down to the fact that there was a war going on. We have no male statistics to compare these ones to, this leaves us with the problem of not knowing how many of the women took male jobs during the war years and how many got jobs created specifically for them. The lack of a quoted author means that we do not know whether the person writing it was someone who would be biased, the textbook as a whole could be very one sided for or against the suffragettes. It is for this reason that we cannot comment on the reliability of this evidence. The fact that this is a secondary source means that the figures may not be completely accurate, they could have been rounded up or down the accuracy of the figures is therefore questionable. The four industries that the source mentions are not representative of the whole economy we cannot see the overall increase of women in work.

To conclude, neither source is full enough to gain a wide view of the war effort of women during WW1, however, together the sources are very useful because we can see what was happening at the time, and what historians have found out when researching the period. Separately neither is particularly useful because each has many questions left unanswered about the motive and background of the source.

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

Many people have said in the past that world war one was what won women the vote but, considering all the other factors, prior to the war this seems to be rather a blanket statement. I am going to explore the sources to see whether, it is in fact a justified statement or, whether there are other less obvious reasons for women gaining the vote.

Source H is a passage from a history book, written in 1980 and titled, ‘women’s Suffrage in Britain 1867-1928’.The argument of this source is that the war actually did very little in gaining women the vote. It says how thinking as many people do, that the war won women the vote, is having a very simplified view. When the writer of the source wrote this, they were referring to the fact that women were still despised in most professions. The source also says that women were only given the vote if they were over 30; they were thought to be much more sensible and, subsequently much more likely to vote the same as their husband. This fact is suggesting to us that perhaps, the government wanted to seem generous in their giving women the vote (in order to persuade them to aid in the rebuilding of the country) but they also did not want to upset male voters. It suggests that it was for this reason that the only women who got the vote were those who posed the least threat to the politicians and bureaucracy of the time. The women who got the vote were not, typically, women who would go out and ‘steal’ men’s jobs, these were women who would stay at home and bring up children. It was the younger women (overall) who did many of the dirty dangerous jobs and they were not getting the vote for this, therefore the theory about it being a reward is not giving the full picture. The source in fact states that the politicians were not rewarding the women's loyal wartime service but were actually rewarding service to the country, through childbirth. So, therefore the problem with this argument is that lots of women who had done war work were not being given the vote (many young women worked but didn’t get the vote because of the clause saying you had to be over forty). How could the say that the vote was simply because of their wartime service?, this argument is to straightforward and lets the government get what they want without looking weak. This is why I believe that many other factors were involved.

Source I is from another history book entitled, ‘women at war 1914-1918’, it was written in 1980. The argument posed in this source is that saying it was the war that gave women the vote is an over-generalization but in a round about way, it is true. This is because during the war, the British nation had changed so much and become much more willing to accept new ideas, that meant that people were much more open to change than they were prior to the war. I believe that this argument may well be true but some other argument must also be involved in order to make it necessary for women to gain the vote.

Source J is part of a speech given to the commons by Herbert Asquith, the former prime minister. Asquith was, throughout his 8-year period in office (1908-16), decidedly anti female suffrage. This is the reason why I think that the fact that Asquith changed his views about the right of women to vote just after the war is far too convenient. Asquith wanted people to think he had changed his mind because he realised that eventually women would be given the vote. When that happened he did not want people to look back and say what a fool he was opposing it; Had Asquith said, at anytime other than just after the war, that he actually felt that women deserved the vote then he would have been looked upon as changeable and conceding. he decided just then that he actually felt it was a just thing to give women the vote, because this meant he could save face and dignity but still keep with the times. Another reason that Asquith gives for giving the vote to women is that the suffragettes did not campaign during the war and therefore they showed that they weren’t just about violence and fighting they could show some patriotism.

Another argument not incorporated into the sources is that the vote was just compensation for the jobs and freedom taken from the women after the war. The women had lost their freedom, pay, independence and most of all husbands and partners, the vote was to show them that this loss mattered.

This suggests that the government wished to look as though they were giving the vote to women because of the war; in fact, they were giving it to them as an incentive to have children and rebuild the country. This in fact suggests that the work women did, had nothing to do with them getting the vote, it was the stereotypical image of women, which caused them to get the vote in 1919 after many years of suffrage.

Another reason other than those mentioned in the sources is that the political system was exposed, because the war the system had gotten the country into was not being won quickly. This was also because the Russian revolution of october1917 had left the looming possibility that, the communists could find a foothold in Britain with the aid of British supporters. Having a restless public could put the country at a heightened risk of such an occurrence. It was also important to avoid another kind of revolution and that was mass violence by feminists, feminism had spread all over the world and was by then an international movement many countries having all ready given women the vote. If the government didn’t give women the vote soon they risked violence on a much greater scale than they ever saw with the suffragettes.

To conclude I am not in agreement with the statement. I believe that the government realised that they would have to give in eventually, after all many other countries had done so a long time before so instead of admitting that they had been wrong about women they covered it up by saying that the war had changed their minds. Although I have said this, I believe the war let them do this. By giving them, an excuse to give women the vote the war acted as a scapegoat and so did indirectly cause the change in combination with many other factors.

Helen Crutcher