votes for women

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Tanzeena Hussain

VOTES FOR WOMEN C1900-28

Study source A

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

There are many things to learn about the reasons the Suffragettes gave for demanding votes for women, and why they felt that they should have the right to vote. From source A we can see reasons why given by the suffragettes demanding the rights for women to vote. Source A is a poster. A poster is a highly effective use of propaganda, because it is clear with bold writing and uses many pictures, which are eye-catching.

The source shows and points out that a woman can be very successful in a wide range of areas and 'yet not have the vote', and that a man can be a failure in many ways, and yet not 'lose the vote'.

In the poster it shows women can be Mayors, doctors, teachers, nurses, all of which are prestigious and respectable jobs. But below on the poster it shows men who are drunkards, convicted criminals, and lunatics, who still gain the right to vote. This shows sign of sexism and that the law back then clearly wasn’t fair. 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. Men believed women should just be ordinary housewives and shouldn’t have the rights to vote as their duty is just to stay at home and cook and clean for the family.

The poster shows if a man can be such failures in life, yet still gain the right to vote, whilst on the other hand a woman can be of many successful things in life yet still not gain the right to vote, shows the law was extremely unfair, especially towards women. These were mainly the reasons why the suffragettes were fighting their campaign, demanding the votes for women.

Study source B

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

Source B is a book written in 1970 called “ Woman or Suffragette” by a women called Marie Corelli. The source tells us the suffragettes were not considered and classified as women by the author, Marie Corelli. This was because the suffragettes were violent and unruly women, where women stereotypes are not, hence the term “lady-like”. Marie Corelli does not agree with letting women have the right to vote but believes the should rear their sons to treat women more equally as she says, “ Women were and are destined to make voters rather than to be voters themselves”. Marie says in the source, the women who are campaigning for the vote are just unhappy women. Women are suited to just have children and be a housewife, not fight for the right to vote. The source tells us that, maybe because of the bad way women have brought up their sons, that is why maybe men treat them so unfairly and wrong.

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Source C is a cartoon produced by Bernard Partridge in 1906 who is writing to arouse public attention. It is a drawing of two women campaigning for the women suffrage. One of the women is a suffragist, whilst the other is a suffragette. The illustration shows the suffragist as a mature, lady-like, high class lady, who fights for her cause maturely, while on the other hand it shows the suffragette as a violent, unruly lady, who is named as the “ SHRIEKING SISTER”, who is thought to be making the suffrage for women more difficult by using irresponsible and aggressive ...

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