Explain why women failed to gain the vote between 1900 and 1914.

Queen Elizabeth for example, did not want to gain the women’s vote. She, and many other women agreed that they were happy to leave the men to discuss and worry about politics. They saw that giving the vote to women would mean having to give it to all men including the layabouts and riff raff. Women were pure and should be protected from the grubby world of politics.

Another reason they did not get the vote was because of the women campaigning themselves. Emmiline Pankhurst was the leader of the suffragettes, tired of being polite to MP’s in order to give them the vote she decided violence was the only way. Although this kept the vote in the public eye, and made the government take notice of them, it made people reluctant to give women the vote if this is how they behaved. They also lost some of their supporters because they were embarrassed to belong to violent women. The suffragists for example, who were campaigning for improvement in women’s rights in general as well as the vote did not want anything to do with the suffragettes anymore so the movement was split in two.

Some people’s attitudes towards the suffragettes and suffragists were formed on what they read in the paper, so the view of the press and newspapers was another factor. Some of the newspapers were saying how dainty and elegant most of the leaders of the movement were but in general the newspapers were talking about how violent and un lady like the campaign was.

While women were campaigning for the vote there was a lot of other things going on such as the unions and Ireland, which the government were more interested in which pushed them to the side. The government also thought that if they gave in to the violent women campaigning to the vote they would be obliged to give in to Irish protestors and cole minors who were also causing riots.

One of the most important reasons was attitudes of politicians and parties. The woman faced a big problem in trying to persuade an all male government that women should be allowed to vote. The two different parties had different views. The government thought that giving women the vote would only result in everyone voting for the Conservative, as they appealed the wealthy people and most of the women voters would be upper class. For this reason the Conservative leaders wanted to give women the vote, however giving the women the vote was against the Conservative MP’s principles.

These reasons were all factors for women not getting the vote. The main reason was of the war. Most people including the government had their minds on that, and because this was a more important issue the politicians did not have time to think about giving women the vote.