Women's Suffrage Dbq

From any time until 1897 when Millicent Fawcett founded the National Union of Women’s Suffrage, men and women and society had very clear “spheres” doled out to them at birth. These ideas of “separate spheres” meant that men were the providers of society: the breadwinners, workers, voters; and women were the nurturers of society: the kind, quiet mothers who stayed at home to raise strong men for the future. As a result of the industrial revolution many women were in full-time employment, which meant they had opportunities to meet in large organised groups to discuss political and social issues. There was also a rapid change in the educational system at that time which meant more girls could go to school or their mothers could hold places of

responsibility in the school boards.
And so women were beginning to earn their own money and have a higher understanding of the world around them, but despite their wealth or class they could not have the opportunity to vote like the men who may be earning or be of a lower class than them.

Despite this, women had no place in national politics. They could not stand as candidates for Parliament. They were not even allowed to vote. This sparked a movement among many women and more groups such as the WSPU were created, although the fore-mentioned definitely had the most influence at that time.
Historians debate the effectiveness of the different groups in the struggle for women's suffrage. Some modern historians argue that the influence of NUWSS (National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies), which were a group of suffragists but are not to be confused with the suffragettes. The Suffragettes were prone to violence and the Suffragists were in to peaceful protest) has not been given enough credit. Membership of this organisation remained high throughout the period. Many women who became alienated from the suffragettes because of their militancy switched allegiance to the

suffragists.
Even more controversial is the role of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). At the time, and ever since, there have been divisions of opinion: some argue that its activities were critical in keeping “The Cause” high on the political agenda; others believe that its violent tactics actually delayed votes for women by its "irresponsibility" in attacking private property.
When World War I broke out in 1914 the whole suffrage movement immediately scaled down and even suspended some of their activities in the face of a greater threat to the nation.
The first and probably most prevalent historian to acknowledge this topic is June Purvis; a writer for the Guardian and author of Emmeline Pankhurst: A biography and is also a professor of Women’s and Gender History at the university of Portsmouth. She is a proactive defender of the Suffragettes; she has appeared on BBC Radio and various TV networks in support of the Suffragette movement.
For example, in January 2007 Purvis jumped to defend the historical women when Christopher Bearman, who does not have a university post but has published in several refereed academic journals, argued in BBC History Magazine: "Terrorists do not perceive themselves as aggressors; they invariably claim to be acting defensively in response to wrongs done to them. The suffragettes are a case in point..." The article then develops a theory that Bearman first presented in a 2005 paper on "suffragette violence", which was published in Oxford University's English Historical Review. He wrote that today's historians have swallowed the suffragettes' own "lies, exaggerations and suppressions". He wrote that historians have ignored the public revulsion at the campaign of arson (The Suffragette’s set fire to churches and politicians houses which were said to be opposed to Women’s Suffrage) conducted by the Women's Social and Political Union in the run-up to the First World War. Bearman claims that historians' failure to tell "both sides of the story" has allowed an "extraordinary mythology" to persist that continues the suffragettes' "own heroic self-image as the victims of violence and injustice".
Purvis was the first to form a rebuttal, She described his comparison of suffragettes to modern Islamic terrorists as "ahistorical and sensationalist" and that his “evidence” was sources solely on newspaper accounts of that time which would have been filtered through and written by men angered by the protests of the Suffragettes. She wrote in a post on The Guardian that Bearman was ignoring facts, stating that postcards from around 1912 showed Suffragettes portrayed as ugly and overbearing "The same bias is portrayed in many of the male sources quoted by Bearman and he does not take that into account," retorted June Purvis. Most provocatively, Professor Purvis questioned whether Dr Bearman was being motivated by sexism. "Is it Bearman's dislike of feminists today that compels him to denigrate feminists of the past?"
Furthermore within the same article of theguardian.com, Purvis strengthens her argument that men are against the Suffragettes for their own sexist reasons by writing about the importance of George Dangerfield's The Strange Death of Liberal England which was published in 1935, and discusses the suffragette movement as one of the forces in the downfall of the Liberal party. As the first male historian to treat the women's movement “seriously”, his book was widely cited and reprinted well into the 1970s.
Dangerfield wrote from a perspective that sees the suffragettes as a deviant and marginal oddity from the main business of male political elites. June Purvis holds the view that Dangerfield presents them as irrational even dangerous beings whose deeds cannot be classified as political. Mocking what he terms these "daring ladies" with their high starched collars and "corseted bosoms", he presents them as demented creatures that chose the hardships of prison life, including forcible feeding, in a “sado-masochistic way”. Despite the gendered nature of Dangerfield's analysis, The Strange Death of Liberal England set the scene for many successive male historians who were unable to break free from the grip of his narrative, writing the suffragettes out of winning the vote or diminishing their contribution.
Purvis not alone in her defence of the suffragettes in Bearman’s article and so was then backed up by Hilda Kean, a history tutor at Ruskin College, Oxford, said that Bearman's argument was “crude" and "absolutely simplistic". She wrote on an online blog that it was nonsense to suggest that historians had ignored sources and swallowed WSPU propaganda. "Simply because historians have a different perspective to him does not mean that they have not done the detailed work on this," she wrote, "The feminist historians I know are very thorough historians committed to scholarship."
Dr Bearman used the anti-suffragette evidence analysing newspaper articles at the time around 1912, however the media had not always been opposed to the Women’s Suffrage Movement, “By what means, but screaming, knocking, and rioting, did men themselves ever gain what they were pleased to call their rights?” as quoted by the Daily Mirror, 24 October,1906.
Constance Rover, another female historian, originated the first university course in women's studies, at Northwestern Polytechnic, Kentish Town (and also wrote Women's Suffrage And Party Politics 1866-1914 (1967) which teaches about the pioneering study of suffragists and their opponents which became the standard text for a generation.), believed that at the initial stages of the Women’s Suffrage Movement, their violent tactics helped the cause and the newspapers were very pro-Suffragettes.

However, Rover wrote in her novel that after November 1911 the position is much more doubtful, that militancy was becoming more extreme and strong antagonism was being awakened. “The public could hardly be expected to approve of arson. The policy [of law-breaking] was likely to be effective so long as it was looked upon as a political protest.” However as time went on the militant activities of the suffragettes were put down to hysteria and fanaticism, they largely defeated their own object and gave ammunition to those who contended that women were unfit to have the vote. This writer was of the opinion that, as the events turned out, militant tactics helped the women's suffrage movement until 1912, but after that date were harmful. But she does not believe that this means that militancy was necessarily a irrational policy. “With hindsight, one can conclude that militancy failed in the last two years before the war, but with the experience of rebellion we have had since, one cannot

conclude that militant tactics are an unsuccessful means of obtaining an objective such as enfranchisement...”
There is also a debate on whether the women finally gained the vote because of their participation in World War I, Constance Rover formed the opinion that instead of being subjected to frequent criticism in the press and by public figures, the women’s efforts in keeping England running whilst the men were at war, greatly changed the public’s opinion of them. Women were driving vehicles, acting as bus conductors and filling many posts customarily held by men, women’s ‘public image’ changed and improved. Rover states that besides those obvious changes, the war transformed the political situation. The suffragettes made it clear that their actions would once again commence once the war was over if nothing was done to enfranchise women. It would have been extremely embarrassing and probably unpopular as well to imprison women who had played such an important part in the war effort.
However, historian Paula Bartley strongly believed that it would be “naïve” to state that women gained the vote solely for purposes rendered in the First World War. She makes the case that only women over 30 were given the vote and the very women who had helped in the war effort – the young women of the weaponries factories – were actually denied the vote. “The significance of women’s war work in the achievement of the vote is therefore perhaps not as great as first assumed.” Batley states that in reality, women were greatly resented in both agriculture and industry, Men ‘froze out’ women workers, gave them no help and even sabotaged their work, The reasons for the shift which took place in Government thinking therefore need consideration.
Bartley puts women gaining the vote down to the changes in government at that time, more suffragist MP’s were elected into the cabinet and, most importantly, Lloyd George who was sympathetic to women’s suffrage, replaced Asquith as Prime Minister in December 1916.