Campaign For Votes For Women example essay topic

HISTORY COURSEWORK 1) A campaign for woman's suffrage developed in the years after 1870 because Britain was changing. The industrial revolution gave women a taste of freedom, by giving them new jobs, skills and employment opportunities and after this taste women did not want to give it up. The industrial revolution split the country up into three classes, working, middle and upper class. Women in the middle class were the biggest campaigners for woman's suffrage because they had the time, knowledge and money to write organise and campaign for votes for women. The industrial revolution had a big part to play in women's enfranchisement. To many the industrial revolution meant changing times and changing attitudes, and during WWI this was true, men were out in the field fighting for their country and back home women were dressing in men's clothes and doing the men's jobs in the factories making shells etc, but once the war had ended things would change.

Before 1870 large families, up to 10 children were normal, women were expected to give birth to child every 18 months due to the high infant mortality rate, no women were exceptions to these beliefs, even queen Victoria herself had 9 children in 18 years! In 1869 women got the right to vote in local elections, but not for parliament which was peculiar seeing that new Zealand, part of the British empire and under British rule gave women the right to vote in 1893. In 1893 the various women's suffrage groups merged to form " The National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies", or the NUWSS. Ultimately women were fighting a losing battle, due to peoples perceptions. Women for thousands of years had been seen as inferior, second class citizens, women had no political rights, when they married a man, all her belongings including their freedom were signed over, if a woman lost her handbag in the street, it would be returned to her husband, because it was his property. Adultery was a good enough reason for a woman to be divorced by her husband, but not a good enough reason for the woman to divorce her husband, so as you can see not only did women have to fight for the vote, but first they had to change peoples perceptions of them, no easy task when the views date from the bible.

The first modern English feminist author was a lady called Mary Wollstonecraft, her book a 'vindication of the rights of women' Published in 1792 set out the revolutionary idea that in modern society we take for granted, the idea that women were entitled to the same rights as men, however the task ahd for the women's rights campaigners was huge. Women had to fight hard to gain entry to the professional world of doctors, lawyers and academics, which was jealously guarded by men. The British doctor Elizabeth-Garret Anderson for instance, , fought a huge amount of male prejudice in order to practise, passing her examination in 1865 and founding the London school of medicine for women in 1874. Although these advances were confined to a select few, they set the pattern for greater equality which would inevitably mean votes for women. The campaign for votes for women gathered momentum about the time of the second reform bill in 1867 which was to extend the franchise. The English politician John Stuart Mill proposed that women should gain the vote, however when the bill was passed it did not live up to expectations, it only extended male voting rights.

In spite of the tireless campaigning of the NUWSS led by Millicent Fawcett (1847-1929) progress was slow and as a result some British suffragists turned to direct action to seek the answer to the question on every woman's lips. In 1903 Emmeline Pankhurst formed the women's social and political union (WSPU). Emmeline and her daughter Christabel believed that campaigning peacefully didn't do anything and that direct militant action was the only avenue that hadn't been explored in the quest for women to gain the vote. 2) The peaceful women's votes campaigners, the suffragists, led by Millicent Fawcett campaigned by legal methods, constitutional methods, talking, lobbying, petitions, trying to persuade politicians to back their cause and bring the matter up in parliament, but later the peaceful NUWSS were summed up as voiceless London Many women however became dissatisfied with this voiceless approach because nothing was happening and votes for women was getting nowhere, these women joined the WSPU led by Emmeline Pankhurst.

The WSPU believed in direct militant action to get their causes heard and some suffragettes were willing to sacrifice anything to publicize their cause, even their lives. In 1913 a suffragette, Emily Davidson (1817? -1913) threw herself in front of the kings horse on derby day, trying to catch its reins, she was badly trampled and despite an emergency operation, she died several days later in hospital. This event was totally unplanned and none of the other suffragettes knew anything about it, but it did give the WSPU vast publicity and attention, so they could tell the reason behind Emily Davidson's death to the world. More propaganda was used in the cat and mouse games between the police and the suffragettes when the women were arrested after being given the choice between and a fine and imprisonment, the women would choose to go to jail and then go on a hunger strike, this caused masses of public attention, especially about the way in which the police tried to force feed the women, so the police decided to let the women go, wait till they had eaten, then arrest them again. But, throwing stones at the windows of the houses of parliament, causing trouble and going on hunger strikes achieved the opposite reaction to what the women were campaigning for, all it did was to harden the governments attitudes towards them and made them even more determined not to give women the vote.

Many bills came before parliament concerning votes for women, but usually it was just one politician bringing the matter up and so it never got past the first stage of voting because it was far too easy for the opposing party not to leave enough time for the issue to be discussed. On one occasion a politician talked for several hours about whether or not a cart should have a rear light at night. Many suffragists made it their business to be noticed by chaining themselves to the railings and shouting " votes for women" until they were carried away, sometimes with the railings still attached! 3) The women's suffrage movement was temporarily halted by the outbreak of WWI in 1914 because women thought it would be un-patriotic to cause trouble during the war, and during this war women had a big part to platy in the economy. Emmeline Pankhurst urged all women to support the war effort and to help in any way possible England to win the war. Women by 1914 had not been given the vote because it wasn't seen, by the liberals, as politically important and few people in Britain regarded the issue as major.

Votes for women could only have become law before the first world war if a major party had accepted it as one of their policies. When war broke out in 1914 it was thought to be on a smaller scale than it was actually on, and people thought it would be over by Christmas, so the most the women had to do towards the war effort was to knit socks and scarves for their husbands in war. However, by 1915 France found itself very short on shells for guns, the great shell shortage showed that the war needed to be taken much more seriously. In 1915 Christabel Pankhurst organised a right to work march in London to which over 30,000 women took part. By late 1915, 2.5 million men had volunteered for active service, and for an army that big lots of munitions are needed, but with all the men in active service there were none left to work in the munitions factories, this is where the women came in. The women worked in munitions factories, factories that built aircraft and they were highly paid too: - lb 3.00 per hour, many women left secure jobs as maids and domestic servants for the freedom that the factory work gave them.

The government urged women workers to join factories etc by putting up posters of their patriotic 'role model', 'Rosie the Riveter'. There was, however much opposition to women having so much freedom and men complained that unskilled women were replacing skilled men, and the government was forced into signing an agreement that stated that once the war was over the women would no longer have jobs and the men would take up where they left off, but the need for women workers was greater than ever when the government introduced compulsory service for all men, this meant that even more women were needed to fill the men's shoes. By the end of WWI 13.5 million men had been conscripted into the British Army to fight for queen and country. Another first was also on its way, women were recruited into the armed forces, as nurses, drivers and secretary's, all of these things were helping women's fight and were also helping to change peoples perceptions of women. Although many women found themselves earning a good wage for the first time during the war, they were still paid less, promoted less often and given more dangerous jobs than men. Also, they were played practical jokes on, and in 1915 there was a strike against women workers, things like this all meant that by the time the war was over women would get the sack or be forced to give up their jobs so men could retake their 'rightful' place in society.

Women who refused to give up their jobs were sometimes attacked and the phrase "heroines to scroungers" was used to describe them. But despite all of this the war did lead to drastic changes in social attitudes, women were allowed to wear shorter skirts, a thing only daring Hollywood actresses would have done before and it was also acceptable for a woman to wear trousers. So, yes I do think that women over 30 gained the vote in 1918 mainly due to women's contribution to the war effort, but that's not the only reason, without the tireless campaigning of the WSPU and NUWSS prior to the war women would not have got the vote, but still to vote women had to be over 30 and a householder or married to one, so this shows that people still thought women were too immature to be able to cope with having the vote, and it wasn't for another 10 years before women could call themselves equal to men and have the vote at 21+, and it wasn't until 1969 that men and women got the vote at 18+, that's some 76 years after women first got the vote in new Zealand..