Babe

Votes for Women

Background information:

Britain = representative democracy:

    - General election at least every 5 years

    - People believed this was the best way: the right to choose who would represent them

    - Some believed democracy was 1) a long cherished ideal, 2) caused by struggle with authority and 3) only very slowly achieved

    - 1918 ( Britain had become a full democracy

Women and the vote:

    - Women were the last group of people to achieve the vote

    - 1918 ( women had to be over 30 and be: householders, pay rent over £5 a year, or have graduated from a British university to obtain the vote

    - 10 years passed, and only then were women on equal terms with men (voting age of 21)

    - So eventually after 1928, regardless of women’s financial/marital status, if over 21, they could vote (they were “enfranchised”)

    - Still, this was after a long, and at terms controversial, campaign

Education:

Feminists believed education was the key to unlock closed doors in politics. When the suffrage movement started, the majority of women from all social classes generally lacked a formal education.

Working class girls:

    - Until 1870, young factory workers went to factory schools and pauper children went to workhouse schools

    - The remainder of the female population (if educated formally at all) were taught in a fee-paying school run by older women/charity schools for poor children

    - When the educations act 1870 was introduced (which allowed local authorities to build schools for children aged 5-13 years), state schools replaced this informal system

    - End of 19th century ( schooling was free and compulsory to all children up to 13 years old

This gave some chances to working class girls to be numerate and literate

    - By the end of 19th century 97% of all children could read and write

    -

  But: the curriculum was too wide, the teaching too rigid, and the classes too...