FQ: What Were the Arguments for and Against Votes for Women?

Focus Questions

FQ: What were the arguments for and against votes for women?

FOR / AGAINST
•The Vote is a way of getting rid of other inequalities. If there were more women in Parliament, more laws would be passed in the favour of women.
•There have been changes in women’s roles. Destroying the “separate spheres” idea. If they were active in public roles, so why not vote?
•It’s not a democracy until women have the vote. If over ½ the country can’t vote then it’s not a democracy. Others banned from voting were criminals and those certified insane. / •Women and Men have separate spheres. Women have babies, men have ideas. God created them different. Women are too hysterical for politics.
•Women do not fight to defend their country. Women wouldn’t want Britain to go to war. They don’t earn their vote because they do not fight in the army.
•Dangerous to change a system that works. If it isn’t broken, why fix it? Britain was powerful in the already existing system.

FQ: How did women contribute to the war effort?

•Campaigning

•White Feather

•Lloyd George paid Emmeline Pankhurst for “Women’s Right to Serve”

•Home Front

•Munitions

•1million in munitions factories which solved the munitions crisis

•By 1914 5 million were in employment

•Nurses, doctors, farmers etc.

FQ: How effective were the campaigns of the Suffragettes and Suffragists?

Suffragettes

•Not Effective

•Violence and Militant Actions meant the Government becoming hostile = Cat and Mouse Act, Force Feeding, Black Friday.

•Very Effective

•After the war they feared that their chaotic campaign would wreak havoc with an already troubled Britain.

•Their campaign made their cause known.

Suffragists

•Effective

•They very nearly achieved the vote.

•They made their name heard.

•Not Effective

•They were easily brushed off by the government

FQ: Why were some women given the vote?

•Contribution to War

•If their campaign restarted, how could they be put in jail after their contribution?

•The “separate spheres” argument was now invalid.

•Their Previous Campaign

•Fear that it would restart

•Their active campaign made their cause known

•France did not get the vote until 1945: they had not campaigned for women’s votes.

However, not everyone received the vote. Those that did a lot of the munitions work did not get the vote until 1928: young women might note for the Labour Party.