By 1880 the amount of new hospitals had soared and in 1900, around
60,000 nurses were working in British hospitals. Nursing became an
almost exclusively woman’s job. For women with a higher education, the
possibilities for work grew even further. New technology like
typewriters and telephones enabled literate women to work in an
office. As the Post Office expanded, their need for clerks grew with
it. By 1914, 90% of the government’s female workforce had been
employed by the Post Office. Even though the women now had office jobs
the men still received the more skilled and responsible jobs by
running the businesses, for this they were paid more. Working class
women now worked in groceries and shops. This was due to the rapid
expansion of the British railway as the shop owners now ordered their
goods from catalogues. They were much too busy to look after the shop
and needed to do the paper work. Also major towns opened department
stores which needed assistants and created more jobs for women.
Between 1875 and 1907 about ½ million jobs were occupied by working
class women in chain stores.
All these new jobs proved that women were now earning money and
gaining independence. Women could now argue that they deserved the
right to vote because they paid taxes (just like men) to a government
they didn’t necessarily support. However, although they had jobs they
were paid less and paid less in tax. Also many women found it hard to
receive the higher jobs that they wanted.
Another reason why women achieved the vote is because highly
respectable jobs now became open to them, which meant they had more
influence at parliament. This helped them pass new laws, which gave
them rights.
Legal Changes
=============
During the 19th century there were many laws passed that benefited the
woman:
1. The Custody of Infants Act (1839)
This act gave women the legal custody of children under 7 and access
to children over the age of 7. (Providing she had not been found
guilty of adultery.)
2. Matrimonial Causes Act (1857)
This act meant that a divorce could be obtained through a new ‘Court
of Divorce’ rather than through a costly private act of parliament.
Also, a woman who had been deserted by her husband gained the same
rights to own or bequeath property as single women.
3. Married Women’s Property Acts (1870 and 1882)
This act gave married women the right to own property and to keep her
earnings from her job. Although there were several loopholes in this
law the second act left none.
4. Guardianship of Infants Act and Married Woman’s Act (1886)
The Guardianship of Infants Act stated that the mother became the
legal guardian of the children in a family if the father died. In the
Married Woman’s Act, a husband who deserted his spouse had to pay
maintenance. Later in 1891, the courts passed a judgement that a man
could not force his wife to live with him.
These changes in the law helped women to get the right to vote because
the system began to understand the unfairness of the quality of their
lives compared to men. The new laws started to make the government
realise how badly women were being treated in the home. However this
was not enough as their struggle for the right to vote was merely
bypassed in the Houses of Parliament, there were still many
differences between men and women. Something needed to be done.
Step forward Millicent Fawcette!
The Suffragists
The move for women to have the vote had really started in 1897 when
Millicent Fawcett founded the National Union of Women's Suffrage.
"Suffrage" means the right to vote and that is women wanted - hence
its inclusion in Fawcett's title.
Millicent Fawcett believed in peaceful protest. She felt that any
violence or trouble would persuade men that women could not be trusted
to have the right to vote. Her game plan was patience and logical
arguments. Fawcett argued that women could hold responsible posts in
society such as sitting on school boards - but could not be trusted to
vote; she argued that if parliament made laws and if women had to obey
those laws, then women should be part of the process of making those
laws; she argued that as women had to pay taxes as men, they should
have the same rights as men and one of her most powerful arguments was
that wealthy mistresses of large manors and estates employed
gardeners, workmen and labourers who could vote. But the women could
not regardless of their wealth.
However, Fawcett's progress was very slow. She converted some of the
members of the Labour Representation Committee (soon to be the Labour
Party) but most men in Parliament believed that women simply would not
understand how Parliament worked and therefore should not take part in
the electoral process.
This left many women angry and in 1903 the Women's Social and
Political Union was founded by Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters
Christabel and Sylvia. They wanted women to have the right to vote and
they were not prepared to wait. The Union became better known as the
Suffragettes. Members of the Suffragettes were prepared to use
violence to get what they wanted.
The Suffragettes
The Suffragettes started off relatively peacefully by harassing
ministers and disrupting small meetings. It was only in 1905 that the
organisation created a stir when Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney
interrupted a major political meeting in Manchester to ask two Liberal
politicians (Winston Churchill and Sir Edward Grey) if they believed
women should have the right to vote. Neither man replied. As a result,
the two women got out a banner which had on it "Votes for Women" and
shouted at the two politicians to answer their questions. Such actions
were all but unheard of then when public speakers were usually heard
in silence and listened to courteously even if you did not agree with
them. Pankhurst and Kenney were thrown out of the meeting and arrested
for causing an obstruction and a technical assault on a police
officer.
The Suffragettes refused to bow to violence. They burned down churches
as the Church of England was against what they wanted; they vandalised
Oxford Street, apparently breaking all the windows in this famous
street; they chained themselves to Buckingham Palace as the Royal
Family were seen to be against women having the right to vote; they
hired out boats, sailed up the Thames and shouted abuse through loud
hailers at Parliament as it sat; others refused to pay their tax.
Politicians were attacked as they went to work. Their homes were fire
bombed. Golf courses were vandalised. The first decade of Britain in
the 20th century was proving to be violent in the extreme.
Suffragettes were quite happy to go to prison. Here they refused to
eat and went on a hunger strike. The government was very concerned
that they might die in prison thus giving the movement martyrs. Prison
governors were ordered to force feed Suffragettes but this caused a
public outcry as forced feeding was traditionally used to feed
lunatics as opposed to what were mostly educated women.
The government of Asquith responded with the Cat and Mouse Act. When a
Suffragette was sent to prison, it was assumed that she would go on
hunger strike as this caused the authorities maximum discomfort. The
Cat and Mouse Act allowed the Suffragettes to go on a hunger strike
and let them get weaker and weaker. Force feeding was not used. When
the Suffragettes were very weak they were released from prison. If
they died out of prison, this was of no embarrassment to the
government. However, they did not die but those who were released were
so weak that they could take no part in violent Suffragette struggles.
When those arrested had regained their strength, they were re-arrested
for the most trivial of reason and the whole process started again.
This, from the government's point of view, was a very simple but
effective weapon against the Suffragettes.
As a result, the Suffragettes became more extreme. The most famous act
associated with the Suffragettes was at the June 1913 Derby when Emily
Wilding Davison threw herself under the King's horse, Anmer, as it
rounded Tattenham Corner. She was killed and the Suffragettes had
their first martyr. However, her actions probably did more harm than
good to the cause as she was a 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?
It is possible that the Suffragettes would have become more violent.
They had, after all, in February 1913 blown up part of David Lloyd
George's house - he was probably Britain's most famous politician at
this time and he was thought to be a supporter of the right for women
to have the vote!
However, Britain and Europe was plunged into World War One in August
1914. In a display of patriotism, Emmeline Pankhurst instructed the
Suffragettes to stop their campaign of violence and support in every
way the government and its war effort.
The War
=======
The suffragists began by persuading men to join the army while
Emmeline Pankhurst staged a huge demonstration that’s aim was to allow
women to work in munitions factories. This would help the war but
would also benefit the WSPU (Woman’s Social and Political Union) as
this would show that they were determined to help work for a better
future.
When the British Army went off to fight the war, many women began to
take over the jobs that before were reserved exclusively for men. They
did hard manual work such as sweeping roads, carrying coal and growing
and harvesting food. They also drove buses and ambulances, became
policewomen and guards and even took over the higher status jobs like
working in banks and businesses. This chart shows the changes in job
allocations by 1918:
Women 1914
Women 1918
Women Replacing Men
Metals
170,000
594,000
195,000
Chemicals
40,000
104,000
35,000
Food and Drink
196,000
235,000
60,000
Timber
44,000
79,000
23,000
Transport
18,000
117,000
42,000
Government
2,000
225,000
197,000
Some women actually aided the British soldiers by working in munitions
factories and becoming war nurses. This proved that they were as tough
as men in many ways. One reason was that they showed they would give
their lives to support the country as some nurses were sent to work in
the trenches to help sick and injured soldiers back to health. Also if
they worked in munitions factories they would receive prolonged
exposure to an explosive powder known as Cordite which caused chest
pains and stained the skin yellow, which aptly earned them the name
‘Canaries’. Another danger in the munitions factories were the
munitions themselves! If a single fault in any grenade or projectile
occurred it could spell the end of the entire factory!
This work earned them the money and freedom that up until now had been
sparsely spread across the women population. They had proven that they
would work to hard achieve the vote. They had changed many minds about
their cause. For instance, one of the main contenders against the
women vote, ex-Prime Minister Asquith, said ‘Some years ago I used the
expression ‘let women work out their own salvation’. Well, they have
worked it out during the war. How could we have carried on with the
war without them? Wherever we turn we see them doing work which three
years ago would have been regarded as exclusively ‘men’s work.’ One JL
Garvin printed ‘Time was when I thought that men alone maintained the
State. Now I know that men alone could never have maintained it, and
henceforth the modern State must be dependent on men and women alike’.
The Vote at last?
=================
Finally, after over a half a century of struggle, a bill was passed
that granted the vote to all married women, female householders and
any female university graduate over 30. This was great news for the
Suffragettes and Suffragists as their struggle had ended in victory!
Or had it?
Although they had gained women the vote, they were still not on the
same terms as men. There were still many regulations about being
eligible to vote if you were a woman.
However, as women slowly gained power in the houses of parliament they
began to sway decisions in their favour. Eventually in 1928, the bill
was passed that granted all women over the age of 21 the vote. They
were now on equal voting terms as men! Millicent Fawcette and Emmeline
Pankhurst had succeeded in gaining women a fair vote. Unfortunately,
just before their victory Emmeline Pankhurst was laid to rest at
Brompton Cemetery, London.
My Conclusion
I feel that women deserved the vote as they had worked hard and
persevered under enormous stress. They had put in 78 years of work to
achieve their goal and in my opinion that’s an amazing effort.
Although they had achieved the right to vote, it begs the question,
What would have happened if something had been different? Would women
still be able to vote fairly in 1928? If for instance, Millicent
Fawcette had not started the Suffragists it would have affected how we
live now! Women may still not have the vote today! All of the causes
are interlocked in this very important way. Without the changes in
education, women would still have poor jobs as they wouldn’t be
educated enough to get better jobs. If women had the poor jobs then
the suffrage movement would have failed because there would be no
power behind their publicity swings. However, during the war the
government would have still had to employ a vast number of women to
accommodate the countries needs. In my opinion, women would have still
received the vote, the only difference being the amount of time taken
to receive it. I think that the biggest impact on the gaining of
women’s rights was not the suffrage, the changes in education, legal
changes or job quality, it was one woman who believed – ‘We deserve a
better quality of life, we deserve a better future.’