The Suffragettes

8th of March is International Women's Day, let's take a moment to remember the sacrifices of feminist who fought literally tooth and nail for the rights we now take for granted.

The Suffragettes wanted the right for women to vote.

The move for women to have the vote had really started in 1897 when Millicent Fawcett

founded the National Union of Women's Suffrage.

"Suffrage" means the right to vote and that is what women wanted

Fawcett believed in peaceful protest. She felt that any violence or trouble would persuade men that women could not be trusted to have the right to vote. Her game plan was patience and logical arguments.

Most men in Parliament believed that women simply would not understand how Parliament worked and therefore should not take part in the electoral process. This left

many women angry and in 1903 the Women's Social and Political Union was founded by Emmeline Pankhurst.

EmmelinePankhurst

They wanted women to have the right to vote and they were not prepared to wait. The Union became better known as the Suffragettes. Members of the Suffragettes were prepared to use violence to get what they wanted.

Suffragettes were quite happy to go to prison. Here they refused to eat and went on a hunger strike.

Prison governors were ordered to force feed Suffragettes but

this caused a public outcry.

The government responded with the Cat and Mouse Act.

The nickname of the act came about because of a cat’s habit of playing with its prey (a mouse) before finishing it off.

The Cat and Mouse Act allowed the Suffragettes to go on a hunger strike and let them get weaker and weaker. Force feeding was not used. When the Suffragettes were very

weak..........they were released from prison. If they died out of prison, this was of no embarrassment to the government.

When those arrested and released regained their strength, they were re-arrested for the most trivial of reason and the whole process

started again.

As a result, the Suffragettes became more extreme.

However, Britain and Europe was plunged into World War One in August 1914. In a display of patriotism, Emmeline Pankhurst instructed the Suffragettes to stop their campaign of violence and support in every way the government and its war effort.

The work done by women in the First World War was to be vital for Britain's war effort. In

1918, the Representation of the People Act was passed by Parliament.

The 1918 Representation of the People Act was the start of female

suffrage in Great Britain.

The 1918 Representation of the People Act gave women of property over the age of 30 the right to vote – not all women, therefore, could

vote – but it was a major start.

The role of the Suffragettes may have been far more important than was originally thought.

WOMEN’S RIGHT TO VOTE

New Zealand was the first nation to grant female suffrage, in 1893.

In Europe the Nordic countries were pioneers in women’s suffrage. The first European nation to give women the vote was Finland in

1906.

Women in Norway received the right in 1913 with Denmark

following in 1915.

The end of the first World War was an important time for the enfranchisement of women in many European nations. Austria, Germany, Poland and Russia

granted the vote to women in 1918 with the Netherlands following in 1919.

Spanish women received the vote in 1931. However, there were certain countries in Europe in which women did not gain the vote

until during or after the second World War.

In 1944 French women received the right to vote. In 1945 Italy followed suit. Other European countries were even later to grant women suffrage; Switzerland did not grant the right until 1971 and Portugal not until 1976.

Elsewhere, Mexico, Pakistan, Japan and Argentina granted female suffrage in 1947. China granted the right two years later in 1949 and

India in 1950.

Examples of countries in which women have only recently been granted the right to vote are South Africa (black women, 1994), Kuwait (2005) and the United Arab Emirates (2006).

Women in Saudi Arabia will not have the vote until 2015.

BILINGUALGUADIANA

2013 - 2014