There was however a problem especially for middle class women, being a single woman meant that they had not fulfilled their proper role as a wife and mother, so men didn’t want to marry these women because they were single and not married. Also finding a respectable job was very difficult as there wasn’t many for middle class women. Teaching was one possibility were they could work as teachers or governess but this was poorly paid for women. For working class women they had to contribute their female wage to the family, these women worked and where homemakers, Dorothy Thompson said that middle class women did have a small choice to decide between public and private life, but working class women didn’t have the choice, they had to work for their family. However women were still seen as the second wage earners to the men, they were paid less for doing hard work and in certain jobs were considered unfit, and were labelled as temporary workers as their true destinies were as wives and mothers.
Different experiences of working and middle class women resulted in different responses to their elimination from the ‘public sphere’ By 1850 working class women lives changed due to the development of industry, the concept of the separate spheres gained more importance as time went on. Dorothy Thompson labels the mid 1840’s as ‘the withdrawal of working class women’, these working class women likely to form religious organisations then political organisation. Women might have authority within their family, but they had no public role.
Working class women did speck in public to mixed audiences in the first half of the century, the Owenite movement saw an expansion of women lectures in the 1830’s and 1840. These women wanted everyone to gain the vote especially working class men because they believed that the result of men gaining the vote would be higher wages and better working conditions and would then lead on to better living conditions which would benefit the whole family. June Hannam suggests that the aim of the chartist movement was to restore the traditional division of labour and sexual power, this meant that that men going out to work got the higher role in the labour movement and meant that working class women were to back down. The lives of working class women, employment and their roles at home with the family didn’t bring them any political authority. At this time there was the emergence of the first generation of working men’s club, which women had no part in and it was reassuring that men had a separate life away from women and their family. The club consists of leisure and mostly labour who were members of the trade unions. This club reinforced the division in the 19th century of the spheres public and private between men and women.
By this time many working women didn’t want to follow these rules, the roles of women were changing they wanted property rights, this is where the roles in women come in. Many women now wanted greater legal equality middle class women were now unhappy with sitting back and not having any other roles apart from the domestic role. There were groups formed to try and change things. In 1850-1880, feminists began to fight battles on several fronts most of this work was associated with the Langham place group, Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon campaigned for married women’s property rights. In 1856 she got 26,000 signatures demanding a change in the law affecting married women’s property. In 1857 the Divorce act was passed which was more accessible. Women were allowed to sue for divorce if two out of these three things could be proved,
These were difficult for women to prove and men only had to prove one out of the three. In 1870’d there was a growing awareness of violence within marriage Frances Power Cobbe wanted to change things as she thought that poorer women were more as risk because if their separation between them and their husbands. Francis argued that children should go with their mothers and they should receive money from their husbands.
In the 1830’s Caroline Norton campaigned about children, and the lack of legal rights to married women her children were taken away from her by her barrister husband she campaigned and in 1839 The infants custody act was passed, this allowed divorced or separated women access to their children up to the age of seven but they had to be unblemished.
In 1871 everyone had to go to school, however there was no higher education for females. Frances Mary Buss opens a North London Collage school for women. Dorothea Beale became a headmistress of a Cheltenham ladies college, she put exams first before cooking etc. Finally Emily Davies successfully campaigned for women to be able to enter Oxford and Cambridge universities in the late 1860’s and early 1870’s. There were few opportunities before 1850, but feminist start taking from the government employment agencies there was the new female profession of nursing and teaching, and they started fighting to get women into medicine and law.
Municipal Franchise Act 1869, gives women the right to vote for local counsellors and orditors and accessors. In 1872 the courts ruled that single and widowed women would use this vote. In 1894 local government act allows women to serve as parish counsellors and urban distract councils. These created small women councils, which allowed voting in a small election. There is slow progress for women at this time but in 1907 local government act aims to admit women to all local government authorities.
Political parties improving and females getting involved would stand on the left government would stand on the right, this is were we see a growth of women’s political organisations. From 1880 both labour and conservative had to involve women in the work, so in 1884 women were admitted to the Prim Rose led which was conservative. The first local women liberal association was founded in 1881, this group became the National women’s liberal federation in 1887. Both groups were very different although they were women’s groups.
The Prim Rose led would not be suffrages, the womanly idea of being a lady effective and practical organisation. The labour party were more assertive and determined then the prim rose, they said that women should shape and remind the role of women, both groups however didn’t agree with women suffrage.
Women were not excluded from everything by now, they did have a role in politics on a local level from 1869 onwards. This shows how my the end of the 19th century the ‘separate spheres’ were changing, women were becoming more involved with public life and where allowing things to be changed. By late 1890’s women were entering local government, serving schools, they had together passed new laws, which changed the higher status of the male, slowly gaining equal opportunities for women.
