At the end of 1915 things started to look brighter for women. Around 2.5 million men had volunteered for active service. An army of that size needs a lot of supplies and munitions, so more and more women were needed to help supply them by taking the jobs that men would usually do but they had gone out to fight. A lot of women had begun to work in new factories that opened to produce planes, weapons and ammunition. This sort of work was very hazardous and was not that pleasurable. Such things as explosive powder could make the skin turn yellow and this caused woman to catch lung cancer. They had very critical precautions, the effects on women were that they were not allowed to have children of their own if had caught the powder in their lungs. Even though women were at risk they still worked and it did pay off because hundreds and thousands of women worked in factories for high wages of £3 a week. For many women doing domestic servants work had left and joined the mutations factories because of the wages they would receive. This could show that women were not weak and were ready to take any sort of work for a lot of cash. Instead of all those women would receive the ultimate prize the right to work.
It was encouraging for women until the year1915. When there were strikes against women workers some men complained of unhappiness- unskilled women taking over and doing the jobs of skilled men. So the government were pressurised to sign agreements with trade unions stating that women would not keep their jobs at the end of the war. So the need for women workers became even greater, on the other hand when the military service was given the thumbs up to go the acts were passed. These introduced recruitment or compulsory military service, into Britain for the very first time. This meant that even more women were needed to fill in for men by doing their jobs. The end of the war had recruited 3.5 men.
The first positive move on the way to women receiving votes was made during the First World War. Thousands of men who had volunteered to fight for their country had accidentally lost the right to vote. This was embarrassing to the government, so intense plans were made to give them back the vote to reward women for their hard work during the war. Then finally on February 1918 the Representation of the people act was formed. This stated that over the age of 30 women got the vote if they were householders, occupiers of property with an annual rent of £5, and graduates of British universities, or women who were qualified but not graduates. So about eight and a half million women were able to vote in the 1918 election. The act had a stipulation to it that although men were given the vote at the age of 21 women was not. This was unfair to women that if they were not over the age of 21 they did not get to vote, this is because they might have thought that women under 21 were not mature and would have voted for anything.
For a good part of 50 years or so before the war an all male parliament was unwilling to have a partnership with women and yet by the close of the war in 1918 politicians had changed their minds. This changed for two main reasons because first of all the existing law stated that men who qualified as householders have occupied a residence for at least a year prior to an election. Huge numbers of armed forces were disallowed to vote because they no longer owned or held a residence for 12 months. A significant number of men, who had risked their lives fighting in the front lines, had never been part of the partnership.
So in 1916, an all-party conference made up of MPs from both the House of Commons and the House of Lords and took charge by the speaker of the House of Commons. The conference took place behind closed doors. There were many supporters of women suffrage in the conference so voted would have been assured for them. Although only a limited number of women were granted the vote because it was feared that they might be mass numbers of women voting. Over eight million women were not in this partnership.
There were a number of key changes in parliament that altered the balance between those who opposed and those who were in support of women votes. Lloyd George, who was sympathetic to women suffrage, replaced Asquith as Prime minister in December 1916. The war was allowed a number of aggressive MPs, these MPs not fully pledged to women suffrage, realised that reform was inventible so used women’s war work as a excuse to withdraw and save face. Women has argued and demonstrated that they were mature and sensible enough by their vital contribution towards the war effort to be rewarded with the right to vote. In May 1915 the Liberal Government evolved into Coalition Government. The was in the result of decline in the value of party divisions vacant the prospect of all party agreement on supporters were no longer fragmented between two, and sometimes three political parties.
The liberals and the Labour party thought that the new proposed female body of voters was much too large and socially mixed to give benefit to the Conservatives. The conservatives recognised that by this time adult male suffrage was inescapable and so had little to lose and perhaps something to gain by women over 30 who were thought to be reasonable and understood easily. Munitions workers in the main were excluded from the vote were also major in gaining Conservative support. The workers were largely working class and might have voted and supported Labour. Therefore a compromise was made, no party got what it wanted. This compromise worked because it strengthened the support a more major scheme of worldwide suffrage.
In the House of Commons, 385 MPs voted in favour and 55 against the clause in the representation of the People Bill supporting votes for women. The bill was then passed smoothly through the Lords largely because Lord Curzon, member of the Coalition Government and president of the League for the Opposing Women, suffrage, encouraged peers to abstain from voting if they could not support it. So on February 6th 1918 votes for women campaign ended after 60 years and they got the vote.
