Part of the reason women were not campaigning for votes earlier was because not all men could vote. Before 1832 only about 10% of the men in the country could vote. The law said that they had to own property or land and be reasonably wealthy in order to register for voting. If only the richest, land-owning men could vote then there was no way for women to get the vote, especially considering that once they married they would be unable to own property as their husband would be the legal owner and not them. However, during 1832, the “Great Reform Act” increased the numbers of men who could vote to about 18% and in 1867 a second reform act was passed that allowed 30% to vote. This led to women being more interested in voting as they felt they were just as sensible as the men who could now vote. As some of these changes in men’s voting were caused in part by campaigning against the old rules it led to women realizing they could make a difference if they tried. Most of the suffrage groups were started after 1867 and when a new reform act was passed in 1884 many women were hoping to get the vote. It did not grant suffrage however it did raise the number of men who could vote to over 50% for the first time, and this drew more women in to join protest groups and movements as they now met all of the requirements for voting except being male.
It was mentioned that some of the requirements for voting could not be met by women because of other laws. Getting these laws changed were a greater priority than voting because they needed to change in order for women to vote. One requirement for voting was being able to own property and in 1870 laws were passed that allowed women to own property for themselves. This is just one example but it meant that women were meeting the requirements to vote if they were men but were only stopped by being women.
The education act was also passed in 1870. This law made it a legal requirement for girls to be educated as well as boys. It became apparent that girls achieved just as highly as the boys. The argument that women were not intelligent enough to vote sensibly was destroyed because of this and also because of other laws that allowed women to go to university, college and medical school. Being educated was another requirement for men to vote and when women achieved this it meant the only thing stopping them was their gender.
The campaign for women’s suffrage needed some figureheads to make people aware of their cause and give them some publicity. One of the famous role models for women at the time was Florence Nightingale. She was famous for working in the Crimean and showed that women could do more interesting things than just stay at home. Other women drew attention to the fight for equality overall. Josephine Butler was a female politician who wanted equality. She showed women that they could get involved in politics and pointed out places where the law was unequal. Without these inspirational examples many women may have just accepted how things were and not tried to make things better.
It was not just women who helped though. John Stuart Mill was an MP elected in 1865, who supported votes for women. The fact that men had elected him to parliament showed that some of them supported the cause as well and showed people that they were gaining popularity. This meant that women could be part of the campaign and not be regarded as strange. It allowed women’s suffrage into the mainstream political concerns by giving it more publicity.
Gaining the vote was about more than just deciding who should be part of the government. It was about equality overall. The fact that most of the arguments against were based on stereotypes of women as indecisive and unintelligent led women to want to vote just to prove them wrong. Voting was part of a much larger issue at the time.
There were many reasons why the campaign for women’s suffrage developed in the years after 1870, but the main reasons were the changes in the law, which meant girls had to be educated and that women could own property, passed in 1870. These changes meant that the only basis for denying women the vote was their gender and nothing else.
