to remind people that the 1918 voting act commemoration is a bit more complex than 'women got the vote'?

[kalapattar]

It's fantastic that people are commemorating the 1918 Act about women getting the vote.

But it's a bit more complex than that.

Before 1918, only men over 21 who owned property could vote.

After WW1 - when millions of non property owning men died on the battlefields, it was extended to all men over the age of 21.

Women who were over the age of 30 who either owned property or who were married to a man who owned property were also able to vote.

(apparently the age difference was to 'balance out' the numbers - otherwise women would have a majority of votes as many men had died in the trenches and they wouldn't want women to have all the power, would they?)

It was a great start - but if you were an unmarried woman who didn't own property or if you were under 30, you still didn't have a voice.

It particularly impacted on the young women that had worked in the munitions factories, performing dangerous but essential work. Denied the vote until 1928.

What happened to the suffragette movement after 1918?

I know there were working class women involved - I guess they carried on?

So really the big date to commemorate is the 1928 universal suffrage date isn't it?

I'm really interested to know if the upper class ladies carried on in the suffragette movement once they had the vote themselves. Can anyone point me in the direction of a good book about it all?

Thanks for the reminder!

I didn't know this! My 43, unmarried and renting self would have been screwed then. Thanks for the history lesson, wish they would teach this correctly in schools!

No, of course YANBU, we should talk about it more!!!

Lots of people will be unaware of some of what you've said, I suspect.

There's lots of factual books if you look - the guardian did a good article a year or so ago on the top ten.

For an easier fiction intro, I really enjoyed "the hourglass factory" by Lucy Ribchester; I thought that was well written and gave enough of an intro for me to want to learn a bit more.

I do think it's surprising that there isn't any discussion or marking of the fact that it is the anniversary of (essentially) working class men getting the vote. Having done my family history reasonably thoroughly I don't think any members of my family, male or female, would have been able to vote before 1918.

Yes! I am getting really annoyed about this. We should be commemorating universal MALE suffrage in 1918 and universal female suffrage in 1928, especially as historically, although rare, some women had been able to vote in the past in local elections if they owned property in their own right so it wasn't even as if they were the first women to ever vote.

The suffrage campaigns, or lack of them, from 1918-28 was really interesting. Suffragettes (i.e. Emmeline Pankhurst basically) had got what they wanted so stopped campaigning. Some other women debated whether to continue campaigning for suffrage or to campaign for other issues e.g. equal pay, more recognition to women's role as wives and mothers, for women being allowed in all the professions etc (like the Six Point Group). The Sex Disqualification Removal Act came in in 1919 and theoretically opened the civil service and professions to women but actually achieved nothing. Women teachers for example, were still paid less than men and expected to leave their job as soon as they married in the 1920s. Other women like Sylvia Pankhurst put more effort into their other political/social interests like encouraging women to be educated about reproduction and birth control, campaigning about housing and living conditions etc. Many other women were involved in pacifism both during and after WW1 and wanted to rebuild a more stable, peaceful Europe. These were all wealthy women though.

Im sure someone will point out all the mistakes in this ramble, I studied this in a lot of depth but a very long time ago!

Woman's Hour is being quite specific in saying that tomorrow marks 100 years since SOME women were given the vote. I expect they will be explaining it in more detail in the show tomorrow

It's awful that there was a massive gap between wealthy women and poorer ones getting the vote. We should be celebrating 100 years of universal suffrage in 2028, not now. 5 million women were denied the vote until this date.

I wonder how different Britain might have been if all women got the vote in 2018? More women than men voting might have made a big difference to society.

How do you know we need reminding? Aibu in thinking you are very presumptuous?

I wonder too how many Mumsnetters wouldn't have had the vote in 1918? I would (old gimmer with house) but my two student daughters wouldn't.

So what was the reason that women finally got the vote in 1928 then? Who was putting the pressure on?

Didn't some areas of Switzerland enfranchise women really quite recently?

Ireland, perhaps surprisingly, was well ahead of the UK in this - all women enfranchised on the same basis as men with the Free State constitution in 1922.