The suffragists showed a little of this in a postcard they produced. The Postcard implied that men can be or could have been anything and still have the vote. Whereas women could be doctors, teachers and caring mothers yet still not have the vote.
- In the early 1900’s many women began to get tired of the way men were treating them, and also suffragettes were getting tired of not having enough publicity for their peaceful protests. So, they got violent. People started to notice them now, but not for the right reason. Parliament knew the suffragettes were trying for the vote, but thought that the women were irresponsible and mad because of their new acts of violence. Arrests of women were becoming more and more common because of their new way of protesting. But when the women were placed in prison they went on hunger strike. So the prisons had to introduce force-feeding, this was cruel and painful. After a while the government introduced a ‘Cat and Mouse act’, this would enable prisons to let women out if they went on hunger strike, then to re-arrest them to serve the rest of their sentence when they had regained their strength.
- Before the war, average working class women had not had the chance to prove themselves. So when the war came along many of them were Britain were glad, as they would show the men what they could do and hope that it would be enough to convince the government to give women the vote. However, this just wasn’t enough.
Conclusion
From all the evidence collected, I can see that women did not only fail to gain the vote just because they were women but, because of men’s attitudes towards them. It had been tradition in Britain for women to be housewives and the men go out to work. I believe this is probably the most important reason why women did not gain the vote between 1900 & 1914.
‘Without the first world war women would not have gained the right to vote in 1918’.
I disagree with this statement because I believe women should have had the vote before 1918 anyway. They did all the manual labour, for example. Cooking, cleaning, looking after the children. They deserved some kind of reward, even to be recognised for what they could do, instead of being taken for granted.
Before the First World War women were slowly wearing down the government with their violent protesting, people were beginning to take notice of the cause the women were fighting for. During the war, Monthly workers magazines were published, these magazines showed men’s attitudes towards women workers remained negative, and with increasing numbers of women able to take on ‘men’s work’ many men were becoming vulnerable to conscription. Besides, after the war had ended women were told to return to their homes and continue with the chores they had previously done. So I do not believe this statement is fair, as women gained little recognition after the war for all the work they had done for their king and country. Although, I do feel that women gained something from their war effort. I believe the women gained some independence from the war, and they also showed the men and the government what they could do, but this still did not help the women's cause for the right to vote. Men still couldn’t get it into their heads that women were equal and would be able to carry out the simple task of voting.
In a speech made by Emmeline Pankhurst in 1908, 6 years before the war, she states that votes for women were important because no woman’s point of view could be put forward, this was because there were no women MPs, as a result of this very little had been done for women by legislation for many years.
Conclusion
From the evidence I’ve collected, I can conclude that the war did not help women a lot in winning the right to vote; there were other reasons why women gained the vote. The war helped women a fraction, but did not make a significant difference to the way they were treated. They were still seen as housewives and were still seen to have brains of children.
It took another 4 years of campaigning and persuasion before women gained the right to vote. But women had to be over 30 and own a house or be married to a house owner, to be able to vote. Then it was another 10 years before women were allowed to vote from the same age as men.
By Rachel Collings