Votes for Women - Essay Example

Historical essay: Votes for Women Explain why women failed to get the vote between 1900 and 1914 By 1900 the progress of new technologies provided women with a full range of work at such places as offices, typing pools, telephone exchanges, elementary schools and department stores. The central issue would seem to be not how it happened that men could have been so hide-bound as not to let women to vote, but rather how it happened that, at such a break of emancipation working for their benefit, and having the deeply ingrained Victorian trust in giving the vote to the trustworthy, women should have lost their chance so completely that by the year 1914 the right to vote seemed further off than ever. Between 1900 and 1914 a number of bills were represented to the Parliament attempting to give women the vote. None of them was a success. This happened because the government blocked them. Asquith was Prime Minister from 1852 to 1928. He was also the leader of the Liberal party and had a weighty majority in the House of Commons. He was in a very powerful position, as there was no Liberal MP who could even try to oppose him. It is well known that Asquith was totally against the campaign for women's vote right. Partly this was so because of the way he considered the voting: he did not think there was need for each individual to need to have a vote, he considered that such representation was more an issue of representing a class or community. That is why one man could represent the ideas of all of his family. Moreover, there were lots of serious problems facing the Parliament within 1900 - 1914, and Asquith was sure that "women's rights to vote" was a minor issue. In addition he paid no attention to demonstrations while he was sure that they did not reflect people's thinking. There was another aspect. If the law giving women the vote was ever going to be passed, it would have to happen in the Parliament. That means that such parties as the Liberals, the Conservatives and the Labour Party would have a part to play. It is false to think that all male politicians were opposed to female suffrage. In fact the Labour Party supported it, and leading Labour figures were deeply involved in the case. A substantial part of the Liberal Party supported it as well, together with many leading Liberals, including Churchill, Sir Edward Grey, and Lloyd George. Nevertheless there was much opposition to it among the Conservatives, as was vividly depicted in conservative Lord Curzon's speech in 1912. In society those who were against the female suffrage used a wide range of arguments, in 1900 many of the opponents to the movement simply considered that it was self evident that women were not intended to vote. To put it differently women should not have the vote because they simply were females. This was probably the position of most citizens in the country. It is worth mentioning that when people began to rationalise the opposition, occurred women who spoke out against female suffrage. The first group of people who opposed the movement were the people who considered the system to be fine and could not be improved further. Those people objected to giving anyone who was not already eligible to vote the right to do so. They had the vote right themselves, and feared any franchise extension. An elitist system of government and objection of widening the democracy was their major belief. As the debate over enlargement the pool of voters grew, arguments against women's suffrage began to occur. One of them was that all government, in England and in the Empire, rests on physical force, which women do not possess, or do not want to contribute to it because of their constitution. The idea is that women are too physically weak and it is not in their nature to be soldiers. The second aspect of the argument was that women influence would evidently help the introduction of pacifism into society. In relation to the Empire there were two further argument lines. One meant that if women got opportunity to gain power in Britain, a demand for the enfranchisement in the colonies would occur and this would lead to independence. The other represented the odd idea that countries, India for instance, would not have the same respect for the ruled by females Britain. Another argument was presented by doctors and their confederates held to the line of thinking that women are more than somewhat erratic at puberty, menstruation and pregnancy and quickly took such "reasoning" into account. It had been seriously stated in the Parliament that as female emotions dominated in them, it would be reckless to let women have the vote right, because that would mean that sentiment would be permitted to get in the way of logic. The religious argument was that God made Adam lord over Eve, so women had to follow men's instructions. This was worked out to mean, that the man goes to work and rules his household at the same time, and, by extension, rules the country. A woman was a wife and mother, happy to be at home, having no time to play a part in politics. A twirl on the Head of the Household argument was that if women had the right to vote they would not listen to their men and this would lead to the collapse of the social order. Another argument concerned that many women would treat politics in a gender perspective, and vote only for policies that fited them. To conclude with social arguments I should say that there was a feeling that social issues dominated the political agenda, at a cost to Imperial and constitutional concerns. Another very important aspect of the women failure to win the right to vote lies in the parliamentary problem posed by defining the suffragists' actual aim. As noted by Sean Lang (1998) the problem, of which exactly females should get the vote, and the basis of it, had a strongly divisive effect on the women's suffrage movement. The whole question of women getting the vote was bound to be controversial, but many of the movement tactics seemed deliberately geared to enhance these divisions. The increasingly dictatorial and autocratic leadership of the movement leaders Pankhursts and Pethick Lawrences, demanding absolute obedience all their team-mates and supporters, caused intense bitterness among them. It should be said that no other issue split the women's movement so intensely as use of violence. Suffragette violence not only rebuffed Asquith personally but made it impossible for him to bend on the issue even if he had wished to, since it would look like as if he were giving in to threats. As was said above the Parliament was also dealing at the same time with serious industrial crisis and with the threat of civil war in Ireland, and it was a precedent Asquith simply could not afford to set. On the basis of all said above we can come to the conclusion that the failure of the women's suffrage movement to attain its objective by 1914 may be ascribed to a majority of factors. The major one must be suffragette violence and militancy, coupled with the dictatorial style of management adopted by the Pankhursts. The suffragettes did not succeed in forming a firm alliance with either of the main political parties, and the movement wasted their potentially useful link with the ILP. Another reason for unfortunate movement was in that Asquith was so personally against to female suffrage, but the part of the strength of his opposition was a product of suffragette violence, to which also contributed the low level of public support and hostile national press. The women movement was also unfortunate because their campaign coincided with extensive struggles in Ireland and in the House of Lords as well. The great strength of the suffrage claims in particular, laid in presentation and propaganda: it did not promote the prompt passing of the vote law, but it determined the way that is widely known to the society. "Without the First World War British Women would not have gained the right to vote in 1918." Do you agree or disagree with this interpretation Explain your answer using the sources and knowledge from your studies. There are many arguments among historians about the effect of the World War I on women getting the vote. As was noted by Constance Rover (1967) for example it is frequently said that women gained the vote 'because of the war'. The war altered the situation in many ways. The evident effect was that women's contribution into the war effort was appreciated and that females, instead of being frequently criticised by public figures and in the press, were generally praised. The public opinion became utterly favourable towards women while the war stressed the participation of women in the nation's everyday life. It was evident to everyone that women were doing many customarily "male" jobs, such as driving vehicles, being bus conductors, etc. Within the period of July 1914 and July 1918 the number of employed women rose by 1,345,000, that was a result of the need to substitute men drawn to the army. It can be said that women's 'public image' significantly improved. Moreover, the war transformed the political situation. According to Arthur Marvick (1974) the most striking in the political situation was the way in which all the old leading opponents of the female suffrage movement recanted, and declared that since women have played a vital part in the war effort, they must be given the right to share in the politics of Britain. However I cannot but agree with Paula Bartley (1998) that it would be nave to think that women gained the vote solely for their services rendered in the World War I. It must be noted that only women over 30 got the vote and those very women who had helped in the war were young women of the munitions factories (as we may see on the cover of The War Worker magazine, June 1917) and got actually no vote. The importance of female war work in getting the vote is therefore maybe not as great as first assumed. In fact, women were very much resented in both agriculture and industry. Males froze out women workers, did not help them and even sabotaged their work. The reasons for the change in Government thinking therefore require consideration. Comparing Pankhursts' claims of 1908 with the year 1916 leads to the conclusion that the women's movement made a decision to take anything the Parliament offered. And it gave only the right to vote over women over the age of 30. First and maybe most significantly, the franchise reform was needed in general. Large numbers of soldiers were ineligible to vote and it was of course unacceptable. Secondly, a number of changes occurred in the Parliament which altered the balance between opponents and those who were for giving votes for women. Moreover, some suffragist MPs were promoted to the Cabinet. Most importantly Asquith as Prime Minister in December 1916 was replaced by Lloyd George, sympathetic to women's suffrage. Thirdly, the war gave opportunity to a number of hostile MPs - Asquith for instance - the excuse to climb down. Those MPs, though not converted to female suffrage, realised that the reform was inevitable and utilized female war work as a pretext to shift. Asquith's speech remarks about the female electors of Paisley in 1920 suggested that he still resented female involvement in Parliament, as he considered women hopelessly ignorant of politics. Fourthly, in May 1915, the Liberal government turned into a Coalition one. The old fear that one party might benefit from female suffrage were forgotten. And finally, Britain was merely mirroring an international movement towards full democracy. For example women in New Zealand, Australia, Denmark, Finland and Norway had already been enfranchised and it would have been an embarrassment if Britain, the mother of democracy, fell behind other countries. I should again agree with another scholar Sandra Stanley Holton (1986) that it seems reasonable to debate that British suffragists might have expected to have won the vote by 1918 if a Liberal government had been returned in the future general election.It was as well possible that there were a limited measure of female suffrage under a Conservative government.Each of these causes essentially modifies those interpretations which emphasize the war advent as the decisive factor in the eventual gaining of the women's vote.It is also possible that the war postponed such a gain. What can be asserted with confidence is the importance of women's suffragists' personal efforts, especially those of the democratic suffragists, in protecting the strong position enjoyed by their cause at the war outbreak. Female war work may have been significant in converting former opponents, and providing others with a face-saving apology to change their positions.Even before this, the political alliances of the numerous democratic suffragists had moulded in support of their demand had guaranteed that women would have to be present in any future reform bill. Many interrelated causes led to the fact that only in 1928 equal suffrage was granted. Bibliography Bartley, P. (2003) The Changing Role of Women, 1815-1914 (Access to History). London: Hodder Murray. Holton, S. S. (2003) Feminism and Democracy: Women's Suffrage and Reform Politics in Britain, 1900-1918. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lang, S. (1998) Parliamentary Reform, 1785-1928. Oxford UK: Routledge, an imprint of Taylor & Francies Ltd. Marwick, A. (1991) The Deluge: British Society and the First World War. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Rover, C. (1967) Women's suffrage and party politics in Britain,1866-1914 (Studies in political history). Toronto U.P.: Routledge & K. Paul. Read More