Votes for women

Women were still just as passionate about gaining the right to vote during the First World War, but now they had seen a new way to go about this campaign.  In 1914, there were still jobs regarded as men’s jobs and those regarded as women’s jobs.  With many men away on military duty, women had to step in and take over.  A poster produced by the government in 1916 (source F) shows that the government was also keen for women to step into the men’s jobs.  Working as a munitions worker would have definitely have been considered a man’s job but now the government needed the women to help.  Many occupations acted similarly to this for women between 1914 and 1918.  For example in 1914 only 2,000 women worked in government offices, by 1918 this had risen to 225,000 (source G).  There was also a women’s army corps set up.

There are many contradicting reasons to the giving of suffrage to some women after the war.  Some people believe it was due to the efforts and hard work of women in the war.  Others believe that the Suffragettes were the cause of women’s suffrage being granted, due to the memory of the violent tactics use it before the war broke out.  A third group believe that votes for women were only granted because votes for men needed to be sorted out.  When men went out to war, they inadvertently lost their right to vote.  After the war they needed to register to receive the vote again.  Some believe that women’s suffrage was just added on to the bill that sorted out votes for men.  I believe this could be true but also that that votes for women would never have been added to the bill in the first place had the campaign for women’s suffrage gone on.

Most people believe that women’s suffrage was granted because of women’s acts during the war.  Women stepped into the traditional men’s jobs and performed satisfactorily.  Even though they had been fighting against the very people they worked for.  Many politicians thought that, women’s efforts as loyal citizens should be rewarded with suffrage being granted.  Though this may be the opinion of the majority.  Source H shows that this is not necessarily the truth.  Many women were not welcome in farms, factories and hospitals.  Men were much more tolerant of them being nurses and teachers.  The source goes on to state that Politicians were rewarding women with the vote for bringing up children successfully to fight for their country.  It also says that only women over 30 were allowed to vote because then they would hopefully follow their husbands.

Many former Suffragettes held the opinion that they were the cause of women being granted the vote.  The Suffragettes believed that their years of violent campaigning had done much to worry the government.  They thought that it was their campaigning that led to the vote.  This was backed up by the former Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith ‘for three years the Suffragettes have not restarted that horrible campaign of violence.  I therefore believe that some measure of women’s suffrage should be granted’.  This speech comes from the Prime Minister who for eight years was strongly against the vote for women.