Womens Suffrage Movement

The world event that I am interested in is the Women's Suffrage Movement.  I think it will be a good way of connecting fashion with politics.

Women's suffrage is the right of women to vote. The women's suffrage movement was the struggle to gain the same right to vote as men.

It began in 1848 in the USA, with the Seneca Falls Convention, organised by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. In the UK 1903, Emmeline Pankhurst formed Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). Emmeline Pankhurst, her daughters and a few friends campaigned for votes for women.

http://www.salford.gov.uk/mrspankhurst.htm

"We have to free half of the human race, the women, so that they can help to free the other half." (Emmeline Pankhurst) 

WSPU initiated a new form of female action: violence. They called themselves the Suffragettes and chained themselves to railings, wrote `Votes for Women' in acid on golf courses, disrupted the postal service, attacked MPs verbally and physically, wrote graffiti on church walls and government buildings, broke windows, destroyed paintings in public galleries and burnt down buildings.

Emmeline Pankhurst, being arrested outside Buckingham Palace, London, May 1914."

 

This Photograph shows her being arrested after leading a protest to parliament and the look on her face shows such pride and defiance. 

       

She was arrested  repeatedly and in 1912 alone she was arrested 12 times. 

"We want to help women…We want to gain for them all the rights and protection that laws can give them. And, above all, we want the good influence of women to tell to its greatest extent in the social and moral questions of the time. But we cannot do this unless we have the vote and are recognised as citizens and voices to be listened to." (Emmeline Pankhurst) 

In 1913, WSPU member Emily Davison was killed when she threw herself under the King’s horse at the Derby as a protest at the government’s continued failure to grant women the right to vote. Her purpose was unclear however, it was suggested that she wanted to tie a flag to the King's horse so that when it crossed the picket line it would be flying the suffragettes flag. By doing this her self-sacrifice may well have made the position of women worse in Britain. Emily’s act at the Derby so horrified those in charge that they were even more against the right to vote for women. They thought that if a

highly educated woman was willing to do what she did, what could society expect of less educated women?

She was one of the most famous of the Suffragettes because  she became a leading member of the Suffragettes who was imprisoned and force-fed. On one occasion she barricaded herself in a prison cell to escape force-feeding. Her cell was flooded with ice cold water which drenched her while workmen broke down the cell door. Such treatment only made her even more determined.

Women were fully granted the right to vote in 1928. 


With my final images my aim is to show how the female role has changed the different fashion styles they now wear.