CIVI - women's suffrage

Mary Humphry Ward ?

• founding president of the Anti-Suffrage League (1908)

• born into family of intellectuals

• worked to improve education for the poor

• believed that men and women = naturally different

• believed right to vote to women = weaken country

Millicent Fawcett ?

• feminist from an early age (19)

• founder NUWSS (1897)

• fought for women’s education → founded Newnham College (1871) for women

what was the NUWSS ?

• 1897

• National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies

• moderate and constitutionalist → law-abiding suffragists

• peaceful, use of legal methods

• primary goal : raise support among the gov

what was the WSPU ?

• 1903

• Women’s Social and Political Union

• deeds not words

• called suffragettes

• called for more radical action (arson, throwing stones at windows, chaining thenselves to public buildings, invading Downing Street)

Emmeline Pankhurst ?

• founder of WSPU (1903)

• born in Manchester

• parents against slavery

• feminist from young age

• famous oratory skills

• 3 daughters also involved in WSPU

Sylvia Pankhurst ?

• daughter of Emmeline Pankhurst

• feminist and socialist activist and writer

• active in WSPU movement (will be expelled from WSPU in 1914 cause disagreed with her mother cause Emmeline was a right wing)

• fouded the Workers’s Dreadnought journal 

what was the Workers’s Dreadnought journal ?

• 1914

• founded in London by Sylvia Pankhurst

• communist newspaper

beginning of the Women’s Right Movement ?

1860’s

dates of the Reform Act which allowed universal male suffrage :

• 1867 & 1884

→ granted right to vote for middle-class men and some working-class men

dates during which several women’s suffrage bills fail to pass in Pt :

1906 - 1912

Women’s Sunday :

• 21 june 1908

• march and rally organised by WSPU to put pressure on Liberal gov

National Anti-Suffrage League est. ?

• 1908

• created by Mary Humphry Ward

• as a response to the growing movements for women’s suffrage

dates in which PM Asquith refused to sign bills that granted the vote to property-owning women over 30 :

1910, 1911 & 1912

txt Mary Humphry Ward : main ideas

• women aren’t quaified to take part in political matters

• politics are a matter of educated men

• putting women in power or giving them the right to vote will ruin the country

txt Millicent Fawcett : main ideas

• differences btw NUWSS and WSPU

• NUWSS = meetings, articles, educational propaganda to raise support among government

• WSPU = use of violence and demanding end of government as a whole as long as they refused to pass Suffrage Bills

goal : 

• peaceful action = better method because better chances at being supported by the political parties

txt Emmeline Pankhurst : main ideas

• oppose government until it does justice to women

• call for rebellion

• call for action in every way possible

• justification for their methods

• denounce police violence against women militants

txt Sylvia Pankhurst : main ideas

• creation of a minimum wage for women

• women paid well enough = + independance, - poverty, + employment