Women's Suffrage

• The National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) was founded in 1897.
• The Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), also known as the Suffragettes, was formed by Emmeline Pankhurst and two of her daughters in 1903.
• Hunger strikes and force-feeding began in 1909.
• The First World War began in 1914 and the WSPU stopped campaigning to support the war effort.
• The Representation of the People Act was passed in 1918, allowing men over 21 and women over 30 to vote.
• Nancy Astor was the first female MP to sit in the House of Commons in 1928.
• The Representation of the People Act was amended in 1928, allowing everyone over the age of 21 to vote.
• Suffragists, including Millicent Fawcett and the Suffragists, used peaceful and constitutional means to campaign for women’s suffrage.
• Attitudes towards women in 1900 were very traditional, with fewer rights than men and it was believed that women should take care of the children, manage the household, cooking, washing, and cleaning.
• The First World War sped up the pace of change, with women taking on traditional male jobs such as bus and tram drivers, engineers, and working in the Women’s Land Army.
• By 1918, Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, was convinced to give women the vote, partly as a result of their efforts during the war.
• Arguments against giving women the vote included that women were the weaker sex and needed to be protected from politics, that women were too emotional to deal with voting, that women’s hormones made them unstable and their brains were too small to vote.
• Emmeline Pankhurst and the Suffragettes lost patience with peaceful tactics and used more militant methods, including heckling and breaking up political meetings, smashing windows by stone throwing, making personal attacks on MPs and their homes, going on hunger strike when imprisoned, and seeking publicity by chaining themselves to railings.