Whereas source C is a poster, that is suitable for a greater audience than the book. It is a cartoon that has been drawn by a male called Bernard Partridge entitled ‘the shrieking sister’. This term is considered to be un-lady like so there some comparisons between the two sources. This source shows that some men at the time were in favour of female suffrage by means of the suffragists. This shows that he is against the suffragettes and thinks that it is un-lady like to use militant methods to achieve your goal.
Between the two sources there are some similarities. These include that both the author and the cartoonist were against suffragette. Yet the piece from the book does not state whether they are in favour or opposed to the suffragist group.
From source B you get the idea that this woman thinks that it is other women’s own fault that they are subject to great injustice. You also gather that the author is a middle or upper class woman due to the fact that she can write an argument of good quality. Yet the cartoon could have been drawn by a person of any class and that they do not believe that women are the cause of their injustice and deserve the right to suffrage.
Question 3: -Study sources D and E and use your own knowledge. Why, despite the suffragette activity, had women not gained the vote by the out break of the First World War?
By the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, women had still not received the right to vote. Two years before the war, at the peak of the suffragette activity, Emily Pankhurst, a leading suffragette, wrote a book entitled ‘My Own Story’. In this book she answered a question that she said she had been asked many times. “What good did all this violent campaigning do us?” her response to this was that their campaign for women suffrage had created it into a manner of news. Although this did help them to be noticed they still did not get the vote.
Source E is an extract from a speech given by a politician who was not in favour of votes for women. From this source you can gain the knowledge that the politicians were becoming scared of the fact that there were more women than men in Britain at the time. This meant that if women were given suffrage they would vote against an act of war and Britain's empire would soon decrease in size. This would be bad for Britain because if they began to lose the empire then other countries would begin to feel in control and another world war at the time would have been inevitable.
In the extract from Emily Pankhurst’s book it shows that politicians and the suffragists are very similar in their actions and means. From this source you can gain the knowledge that a large proportion of the upper and middle class including the males are in favour of women’s rights to vote. Towards the end of the extract the author makes the statement that the suffragettes are willing to fight for their cause. This is a typical suffragette response and is a very un-lady like one.
Question 4: - study source F and G. How useful are these two sources as evidence for the contribution of women to the war effort in the years 1914–1918?
The two sources are not very good at explaining the contribution of when in the war. From source F it shows that the government were in need of women because men were away at war but it was used as propaganda and was distorted from the truth. The poster shows that men were doing their job in the front line, from the image of the gun, battlefield and soldier you get this. It shows that it was now time for the women to do their jobs in the factories and other war related industries. There is a major limitation with this source because there is no information to show whether the poster was a success or not. So we cannot tell whether it worked to show evidence upon the contribution of women. This source does not show what the job entails so people would be less likely to enrol in it because the jobs may include a lot of hard labour that they are not used to in their normal life style. Although this poster shows that the government wanted them to work it also show that the government have accepted the importance of the role of women. The poster has been produced by the government in the middle of the war as an advertisement to help make women enrol into munitions factories and other injuries. Source G show the statistics of the women in the industrial work throughout the war. There are a lot of limitations to this source because the figures have been rounded so they are not exact numbers and it shows that the source is not very reliable. The data between these two dates have not been recorded or they are missing so this does not help to give much evidence. The fact that women were working in the war and the figures in all the categories have grown are very good. This is because without this data there would be very little evidence to show that the women's war work had considerably helped during the war.
Question 5: - 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.
Some historians partially agree with the statement, that “It was the work that women had done during the war that earned them the vote”. They think this because there are three main opinions that are thought to be the main reasons to women getting the vote. These include the work not only the work that women had done in the war but also because of the roles and actions of both the suffragists and suffragettes. Other historians believe that there was just a change of heart in a lot of men and that is what finally got them the vote.
The work that women did during the war helped women to get the vote. During the war women took over most men’s jobs whilst the men went away to fight. They took over the munitions factories, chemical and metal industries and most other jobs that before the war were deemed unacceptable for a woman to do.
The suffragists began in 1867; their group began the campaign for women’s suffrage. This group of women began to write letters; make leaflets and did everything in a way that was thought to be very lady-like. In 1897 this group broke into two the suffragists and the newly formed suffragettes. The suffragettes began to use violent measures to get their point across. The work done by both of these groups led people into the knowledge that women wanted suffrage and they were willing to do anything to get it.
Many historians took into account that without the work that women did throughout the course of the war Great Britain would have lost. It was these two groups, the suffragists and the suffragettes, who pushed aside their cause and took up their roles on what the government needed of them.
An alternate view on the way that women received the suffrage that they wanted was that there were a lot of changes in democratic belief at the time so some people believe that it was inevitable that they received it. There were many changes in women’s rights throughout the latter part of the 19th century like the matrimonial causes act. With all of these political changes happening, it would be inevitable that women would receive the right to vote.
Source I helps you to understand the impact of the war on British democracy. It tells you how some men at the time just saw women in a new light. And also people may have thought at the time that they had helped the county and without them they would have been conquered.
