There was more to the women’s movement in the 19th and early 20th centuries than the Suffragettes. Campaigns for women’s rights to education, work, custody of their children, divorce and property rights went on at the same time as the campaign for the vote. The campaign for the vote long preceded the arrival of the Suffragettes in 1903, with the earliest campaigns for female voting beginning in the 1850s. Popular perception of the Suffragettes – illustrated by some of the videos below – is that they were responsible for women getting the vote. But alongside the Women’s Social and Political Union stood the larger and more respectable National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies other women’s political organisations, such as the Primrose League within the Conservative party and the Women’s Liberal Federation. The Suffragette campaign itself ended in 1914, four years before women were granted the vote, and when war broke out in that year other factors again came into play – including women’s contribution to war work and the fact that voting rights were being extended to working class men. In this context, political self-interest played a part, with Conservatives and Liberals supporting votes for propertied middle class women over 30 as a means of balancing the vote.
Some excellent videos on the women’s movement during WWI are to be found on the BBC:
Emmeline Pankhurst and the Suffragettes
Women’s rights in the 20th century
100 Years of the Women’s movement
RGS History 