It is a fact that the 75th anniversary of woman suffrage in England has
been celebrated, but this event only reflect the year when was completly
gained this fundamental right, so in Great Britain, Mary Wollstonecraft,
in her book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), advocated
woman suffrage for the first time, and was demanded by the Chartist movement
of the 1840s.It is important to add that by 1950 women in
Britain, were probably treated worst than in any other industrialising
country at this time.
The first woman
suffrage committee was formed in Manchester in 1865, and in
1867
Jonh Stuard Mill, a prominent liberal intellectual, presented to Parliament
this society's petition, which demanded the vote for women and contained
about 1,550 signatures.
Although The
Reform Bill of 1867 contained no provision for woman suffrage, woman
suffrage societies were forming in most of the major cities of Britain,
and in the 1870s these organizations submitted to Parliament petitions
demanding the franchise for women and containing a total of almost three
millions; but Queen Victoria's implacable
opposition to the women's movement made that Parliament defeated their
petition. In
1869,
however, Parliament did grant women taxpayers the right to vote in municipal
elections, and in the ensuing decades women became eligible to sit on county
and city councils.So after 1870 the situation, particulary for middle
women who became increasingly determined to have equal rights, began to
improve.
In 1897
the various suffragist societies united into one National Union of Women's
Suffrage Societies, thus bringing a greater degree of coherence and
organization to the movement; they started to demand the right to vote
in national elections.
After the
return to power of the Liberal Party in 1906, the succeeding years
saw the defeat of seven suffrage bills in Parliament. As a consequence,
many suffragists became involved in increasingly violent actions
as time went on. These suffragettes, as they were known, were sent
to prison and continued their protests.They caused great feelings of hostility
by their lawless acts, but they believed that it was only by acting such
a way that they could gain the attention of the nation. I agree with this
belief, I also think that if they had not been willing to shock the public,
they might not have succeeded.
When
World War I began,1914, the woman suffrage organizations shifted their
energies to aiding the war effort, and their effectiveness did much to
win the public wholeheartedly to the cause of woman suffrage,so Britain
would have been unable to continue the war without the women who took men´s
places in the factories
The need for
the enfranchisement of women was finally recognized by most members of
Parliament from all three major parties, and the resulting Representation
of the People Act was passed by the House of Commons in June 1917
and by the House of Lords in February 1918 (this year, 29 per cent
of the total workforce of Britain was female; women had to be given the
vote). Under this act, all women age 30 or over received the complete franchise.
An act to enable women to sit in the House of Commons was enacted shortly
afterward.
In 1928
the voting age for women was lowered to 21 to place women voters on an
equal footing with male voters.
Undoubtely many
men also moved away from Victorian values, and many leading writers like
D.H.Lawrence, Aldous Huxley, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf freely discussed
sexual and other sensitive matters, which would have been impossible for
earlier generations. In 1929, it was publised by V. Woolf A Room of
One´s Own, her book-lenth feminist essay.
Once women could
vote, many people felt that they had gained full an equal rights, but there
was still a long battle ahead for equal treatment and respect both at work
and at home.