Source analysis - Essay Example

’s suffrage, it also reminds that there is more to be achieved and exhorts all those involved in the movement to continue striving for a better world in the wake of the war’s aftermath. Catherine Osler was secretary of the BWSS from the year 1885. A year before that, she was chosen president of the Birmingham Women’s Liberal Association. She was the founder of the Birmingham Ladies’ Debating Society in 1881 and a member of the National Union of Women’s Workers. In 1891, she brought a resolution for women’s suffrage and in one of her speeches in 1908, she strongly favoured the enfranchisement of women in a debate discussing the motion that ‘the time has now come for granting the franchise to women on the same terms as it is or may be granted to men.

’ In 1901 she became president of the BWSS. She held that position until 1921 when the society finally dissolved on the grounds that its aims had been achieved. In 1911, she published a gripping and judicious study of family life titled A Book of the Home, in which she observed that ‘there are no natural spheres for men and women’. Democracy is supposed to be a political system in which all are equal. However, for a long time, even in the democratic countries like US and UK, the right to vote was limited to men and women had no opportunity to take part in the process of elections.

Even farmers and labourers, only men of course, came under the purview of the right to vote by the Bill of 1884 in UK. Campaigns by women for the right to vote began in the latter half of the 19th century. However these campaigns were mostly peaceful and followed democratic methods like organising meetings and sending petitions to the authorities by which they sought to persuade and even pressurize the government to make necessary changes in the direction of granting women the right to vote. There were a large number of groups which worked with similar mindset.

The term ‘suffragists’ refers to the women who took an