Womens suffrage is the righ... free essay sample

Womens suffrage is the right of women to vote in political elections and encompassed the demand for the right of women to run for the public office (Strong-Boag, 2016). The womens suffrage movement is a decades-long struggle of women fighting for equality and justice; wanting to address not only the right to vote, but to also improve education, healthcare, and employment for women (Strong-Boag, 2016). Emmeline Pankhurst was one of the most renowned activists in the suffrage movement in Britain, founding the Womens Franchise League in 1889 and the Womens Social and Political Union (WSPU) in 1903. In 1999 Time Magazine named Pankhurst as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century, and her work as an activist is recognized as an essential element in achieving womens suffrage in Britain (Weihman, 2016). In her autobiography, My Own Story, Pankhurst writes Men make the moral code and they expect women to accept it. They have decided that it is entirely right and proper for men to fight for their liberties and their rights, but that it is not proper for women to fight for theirs (Pankhurst, 1914; Weihman, 2016). In this essay, we will follow Emmeline Pankhursts role in womens suffrage in Britain, from the creation of the Womens Franchise League in 1889 to her death in 1928 and how this differed from previous suffrage campaigns and organizations.It was from an early age that Emmeline Pankhurst began to support the suffrage movement. At the age of fourteen in 1872, Pankhursts mother took her to her very first suffrage meeting, and it was from that meeting that she came away inspired (Daniels, 2017). After attending a progressive womens school in France, Pankhurst gradually started to get more politically involved after meeting her lawyer husband, Richard Pankhurst in the early years. In 1889 Pankhurst, along with her husband and fellow activists formed the Womens Franchise League in London. The p urpose of the league was to gain the right to vote for all women, regardless of if they were married or unmarried (Kettler, 2018). The reason behind the creation of the league was because most other groups in London sought to only push for single women and widows to be given the right to vote (Kettler, 2018). However, the group disbanded in 1893 having failed to achieve their goals and with the Pankhurst family facing money problems, they were forced to shift to Manchester and joined the newly formed Independent Labour Party (ILP) in 1894 (Daniels, 2017). Later in the year Pankhurst was elected to the position of Poor Law Guardian in Chorlton-on-Medlock, establishing herself as a powerful voice of reform on the Board of Guardians (Purvis, 2002). However, after helping Richard run an unsuccessful parliamentary campaign, Pankhurst ended up facing legal trouble in 1896 when she and two other men violated a court mandated order against having ILP meetings at Boggart Hole Clough; refusing to pay fines based off Richards legal counsel, the two men were imprisoned for a month. Whereas Pankhurst evaded imprisonment bec ause the magistrate feared the backlash of imprisoning a woman with such a strong influence in the Manchester community (Purvis, 2002). Through the ILP, Pankhurst worked to help feed the poor and unemployed people in Manchester, overlooking a local workhouse – a place where people that are unable to support themselves are offered shelter and employment. It was after seeing the conditions of the workhouse, Pankhurst helped to improve the conditions entirely and within five years she was able to establish a school within the workhouse to educate the young children (Daniels, 2017). In 1898, Pankhurst suffered the loss of her husband after 19 years of marriage to a gastric ulcer. Due to a large amount of family debt and becoming a single parent to five children, Pankhurst was forced to resign from the Board of Guardians and shift her family to a smaller house, selling off old furniture until she was able to accept a paid position in Chorlton as the registrar of births, marriages, and deaths (Daniels, 2017). It was from this job that Pankhurst was exposed to other financially struggling women, reinforcing her ideals about how the women of Britain were victimized by these unfair laws; writing in her autobiography about how, They used to tell me their stories, dreadful stories some of them, and all of them pathetic with that patient and uncomplaining pathos of poverty (Daniels, 2017; Pankhurst, 1914). Finally observing the significant differences among the lives of men and women, Pankhurst realized that for the conditions of women to improve, women needed the power to vote so that their voices could be legitimized in the law-making process. In 1903, Pankhurst founded the Womens Social and Political Union (WSPU), adopting the motto Votes for Women and accepting only women as members; the organization was later dubbed by the press as suffragettes meant as an insulting play on the word suffragists, but the women embraced the name and titled the WSPUs newspaper Suffragette (Daniels, 2017). However, in 1907 the WSPU became divided because not everyone agreed with Pankhursts violent methods, leading to the development of the Womens Freedom League which favoured peaceful lawbreaking methods such as the refusal to pay taxes or complete the government distributed census (BLL, 2018).Before Emmaline Pankhurst headed the suffragette organization, it is important to define the previous suffrage movements, their attempts to gain equal voting rights and the difference between suffragists and suffragettes. In the mid-19th century before suffragettes came to be, the first wave of women campaigning for the right to vote were known as suffragists, who believed in peaceful and constitutional campaigning methods. In 1866 a group of suffragists organized a petition that gathered over 1500 signatures and was given to Henry Fawcett and John Stuart Mill, the only two members of Parliament that supported the suffrage movement at the time (BLL, 2018). Mill worked to draft an amendment to the Second Reform Bill to give women the equal right to vote as men and presented it to parliament in 1867. However, the amendment was defeated by a majority vote against the bill with 196 votes against 73 (BLL, 2018). Following their defeat, the London Society for Womens Suffrage was established, and multiple extensions were created all over Britain. In 1897, seventeen of the individual groups came together to form the National Union of Womens Suffrage (NUWSS) led by Millicent Fawcett, the wife of MP Henry Fawc ett (BLL, 2018). The NUWSS was focused on a peaceful and non-confrontational method involving petitions, posters, leaflets, calendars, and public meetings aimed at educating the public (BLL, 2018). However, most of the leaders were from middle or upper-class families, and the campaigns were focused on gaining the right to vote for middle-class property-owning women (BLL, 2018). The suffragettes on the other hand, felt that using a peaceful and legal approach did not render results, and advocated for a more militant approach. The suffragettes adopted the motto Deeds not Words, consisting more of working-class woman. Pankhurst with her daughters Christabel and Sylvia worked to develop the militant tactics within the WSPU, using tactics such as chaining themselves to railings, disrupting public meetings, and damaging public property (BLL, 2018). The suffragettes were constantly arrested and imprisoned, continuing their protests in jail cells by going on hunger strikes. In 1913, the Prisoners Temporary Discharge for Ill-Health Act was passed, which allowed prison authorities to release hunger-striking women prisoners when they became too weak, and then re-arresting them when their health recovered. Pankhurst was jailed and released on 11 occasions because she always utilized the hunger-strike tactic (BLL, 2018). Similarly, to the NUWSS, the WSPU also used posters and pamphlets in their campaigns, selling about 20,000 copies of their newspaper, Votes for Women, every week.In 1914, Britains involvement in World War I resulted in the WSPU stopping their militancy and joining the war effort. Pankhurst believed it was her patriotic duty to help and declared a truce between the WSPU and the government, in return the government released all suffragette prisoners at the time (Daniels, 2017). As a result, the effort of the women in the workforce during the war were able to show how valuable they are in society by doing jobs that were previously only held by men (Daniels, 2017). By 1916, the attitude towards women had changed because of the essential roles they filled while the men fought for the country. On February 6th, 1918 Parliament finally passed the Representation of the People Act, which allowed all women over 30 years of age meeting the minimum property requirements were given the right to v ote. However, women were still not politically equal to men because they could vote from the age of 21, but this was done so that women would not become most of the electorate, because if they were given the same requirements as men, the women would severely out number them because so many died in the war (Parliament UK, 1918). The suffragette movement finally slowed down and in 1925 Pankhurst joined the Conservative party, running for a seat in Parliament, but unfortunately, she had to withdraw due to bad health reasons, eventually dying at the age of 69 on June 14th, 1928 just weeks before the voting requirements for women was extended to women over twenty-one years of age on July 2nd, 1928 (Daniels, 2017).In conclusion, the womens suffrage movement is an important marker in history because with persistence and determination, the women were able to gain their right to vote. Emmaline Pankhurst was a key figure in the efforts, and regardless of her militant tactics, she was determined to do what she believed was necessary to win women in England the right to vote. Her methods and motto were often criticized for being too violent, followers going to the extent of assaulting police officers, and famously, Emily Davison threw herself in front of the Kings horse during the 1913 Epsom Derby, dying from the crit ical injuries (Telegraph, 2016). However, regardless of her methods, she did not want to stop until she reached her goal. When World War I came along, her strategy to push women into supporting the war effort helped change the prejudice that women are only meant to be home caretakers. Pankhurst altered the image of women to show just how powerful they can be and that they have just as much of a right to be involved in politics.