women's suffrage

women's suffrage. The campaign for women's suffrage began in 1866 when a group of women presented a petition to J. S. Mill requesting female enfranchisement. Mill moved an amendment to the Reform Act of 1867 to include women, which was defeated. Thereafter organizations sprang up all over the country and joined forces to form the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). By the end of the century a majority of MPs had pledged themselves to vote for women's suffrage bills, which passed their second readings three times only to be blocked by governments.

To invigorate the campaign Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst (1858–1928) founded in 1903 the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), and her daughter Christabel (1880–1958) in 1905 initiated mildly militant tactics, designed to make the incoming Liberals take the women's demand seriously. Because of their youthfulness militants were known as suffragettes, and members of the NUWSS, led by Millicent Garrett Fawcett (1847–1929), as suffragists.

In 1912, when other means were failing to break Asquith's resistance, the Pankhursts resorted to destruction of empty property on a massive scale. The war brought the campaign virtually to an end; women's patriotism (coupled with a fear of renewed militancy) induced Parliament in 1918 to enfranchise women over 30, provided they occupied or were the wives of occupiers of premises of not less than £5 annual value.

The campaign was supported by many writers; in 1908 the Women Writers Suffrage League was founded by Cicely Hamilton (1872–1952), journalist, playwright, and novelist, and journalist Bessie Hatton. Its president was Elizabeth Robins (1862–1952); her play Votes for Women (1907) was highly influential. Other supporters included O. Schreiner, M. Sinclair, A. Meynell, S. Grand, R. West, and V. Hunt. Suffragists and suffragettes were widely portrayed in the literature of the period: see V. Woolf's Night and Day, H. G. Wells's Ann Veronica, G. B. Shaw's Press Cuttings. Accounts of the movement were also written by leading feminists, including the Pankhursts and E. Pethick-Lawrence (1867–1954). It produced many periodicals, including Women's Suffrage Journal, the Common Cause, Votes for Women, and Women's Dreadnought.