The Battle for Women’s Suffrage

The mid-to-late-nineteenth century brought about quite a few changes across European society, with one of the most important shifts being the fight for women’s rights and suffrage. Women, particularly those who were married, saw an increase in their overall freedoms during this time and by 1884, men could no longer request their wives be imprisoned for refusing to have sex with them. During this time, women were fighting for organized national suffrage with the movement beginning in the late 1800s. The fight for suffrage officially began in Britain with the formation of the National Society for Women’s Suffrage. It was the first organization of its kind in Europe, but it would spark similar fights across the region. Still, despite their efforts, women in Britain –– and elsewhere in the world –– would not earn the right to vote until well after the turn of the century.

The women’s movement gained ground in Britain during this time. When earning suffrage failed, supporters of change became more radicalized in their views and actions. Some of the most influential women of the time were known as the suffragettes, who included key figures such as Emmeline, Sylvia, and Christabel Pankhurst (Levack, Muir, & Veldman, 2011). They were, in some regard, the extremists of this political fight and believed that men in power would never grant women equal privileges and rights in the same arena. These women took to physical acts of rebellion to bring attention to their beliefs, by chaining themselves to Parliament and burning churches. They adopted the motto “Deeds, Not Words” in their effort to bring about a rebellion, which makes sense when considering how far the suffragettes were willing to go (and how violent they would become) to spread their message and achieve their political goals.

Several moments are particularly crucial to understanding the push for women’s suffrage in Britain during the early twentieth century. The first is Black Friday, which took place in November of 1910. It was a series of protests after Parliament stopped reading the Conciliation Bill, which was designed to grant voting rights to about one million women between Britain and Ireland. When the bill stopped being read in the chambers, hundreds of women from the Women’s Social and Political Union protested, leading to accusations of police brutality against the women (Clarke, 1996). Protests and physical demonstrations were not the only tactics used by the suffragettes to further their cause. From hunger strikes to the use of acid, fire and destruction of property, the suffragettes lived up to their adopted motto of “Deeds, Not Words.”

As the suffragettes waged some form of warfare against British society, another key woman was fighting the battle. Millicent Fawcett had a different approach than the Pankhurst women. Fawcett was peaceful in her goals with the NUWSS and thought the extreme, radicalized actions of the Women’s Social and Political Union were doing more harm than good to the women’s cause. Early in the 1900s, Fawcett and her organization had many thousands more members than did the Pankhurst organization (National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, 1913).

While there were thousands of women fighting in favor of women’s suffrage in the late 1800s and early 1900s, women did not gain the right to vote until 1918 with the Representation of the People Act, though it did not enfranchise all women. Women’s suffrage occurred in waves in the United Kingdom, with another decade passing before the Equal Franchise Act 1928, allowing all women over 21 to vote, equal to the rights extended to men in the society. Women fought in Britain for many years and in many ways to earn the right to universal national suffrage.

References

Clarke, B. (1996). Dora Marsden and early modernism. University of Michigan Press.

Levack, B., Muir, E., & Veldman, M. (2011). The West: Encounters and transformations, combined volume (3rd ed.). Pearson.

National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. (1913). National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. Retrieved from http://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/21cc/struggle/suffrage/sources/source8/nuwss.html