Votes for Women

By the end of the nineteenth century many middle-class women desperately wanted the vote, because they believed that women M.P.s would campaign for women's social and economic rights in Parliament.  The Chartists had campaigned for manhood suffrage (votes for all men) and had achieved some degree of success.  By 1900 most men had the vote.

Women's Suffrage Associations had been set up in the 1850s.  Between 1860 and 1900 Parliament discussed female suffrage (votes for women) many times but on each occasion the idea of giving women the vote was rejected. 

People who supported the campaign to give more men and women the vote became known as suffragists.  In 1903 Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst set up the Women's Social and Political Union (W.S.P.U.).  The members of the union became known as suffragettes (women campaigning for the vote).  The W.S.P.U. started a campaign to put pressure on leading politicians.  Women heckled Liberal M.P.s at meetings, organised petitions and chained themselves to the railings outside the homes of government ministers.  In 1912 Christabel Pankhurst organised an even more violent campaign.  W.S.P.U. members smashed shop windows, set fire to houses and slashed pictures in the National Gallery. Emily Davison, a militant suffragette, threw herself under the King's horse in the Derby.  She died four days later.

The government struck back.  Suffragettes who broke the law were put into prison.  Many women prisoners went on hunger strike.  The government allowed prison governors to feed suffragettes by force.  One woman had liquid food pumped into her lung by mistake and nearly died.  In 1913 the government decided to stop force-feeding the suffragettes.  Instead they released the starving women from prison and then rearrested them as soon as they were fit.  This Prisoners' Temporary Release Act reminded people of a cat playing with a mouse so it was nicknamed 'The Cat and Mouse Act'.

By the outbreak of war in 1914, women were no nearer getting the vote.  Emmeline Pankhurst called off the campaign of violence and told the suffragettes to help the government win the war against Germany.  Large numbers of women were employed in war work.  Immediately after the war the government gave the vote to all women over the age of 30 who were householders or wives of householders.  In 1928 the voting age for women was lowered to 21, the same age as for men.