Females were seen as to be too week as to take part in politics. Men believed women would get easily confused and would be unable to make up their minds. Women were unhappy with how they had to pay taxes, but had no say in how they were spent. Many women were highly educated, but were denied the vote. If a man were a lunatic he would still have the possibility to vote. One woman said, “Men were quite prepared to trust a female doctor with their lives, but would not trust them to vote.”
Many women wanted to have their say in the government, to use their votes to influence the government and to bring about changed. Mrs Wilbaut in 1900 said “The working woman need the suffrage… in order to obtain better houses, better conditions of living, shorter hours of working, better care for their children”.
Eventually the National Union of women’s’ suffrage societies (NUWSS) was set-up. Lydia Becker was the leader of this movement, but she passed away in 1890, passing her position to Millicent Garret Fawcett.
Many protests were made for women’s suffrage. Suffragettes did extremely dramatic things to get their views across. Females chained themselves to gates, went on hunger strikes, produced posters, books, were very violent towards policemen and made as much hassle as possible. The most famous act associated with the Suffragettes was June 1913 when Emily Wilding Davison threw herself under the King's horse, Anmer, as it rounded Tattenham Corner.
Suffragettes were quite happy to go to prison for their actions. They would usually refuse to eat and went on a hunger strike. The government was very concerned that they might die in prison giving the movement martyrs. Prison governors were ordered to force feed Suffragettes but this caused a public outcry as forced feeding was used to feed lunatics as opposed to what were mostly educated women.
The suffragette’s actions probably did more harm than good to the cause, as they were usually highly educated women. Many men asked the simple question - if this is what an educated woman does, what might a lesser-educated woman do? How can they possibly be given the right to vote?
