How Successful Was The Suffragettes Movement

The Suffragette Movement
By: Gurav Vats of 9TOM

This is an essay on the Suffragette Movement and the rights of women in countries around the world, the question that will be focused on in this report is, ‘Did the Suffragettes succeed in obtaining their motive?’ This question is important because it is important because the actions of the Suffragettes affected the mentality of oppressed women around the world. In this this report I will be writing about these for things: 1. who the Suffragettes were? 2. What methods did they use to achieve their goal? 3. What effect did their actions have on the government and public of their nation? 4. What are the rights of women in India? During the late 1900’s Britain was undergoing a tremendous transformation
aided by The Industrial Revolution. Men worked hard at various posts due to the onset of new occupations and women worked as hard at home to take care of the household and children, if there were any. This routine was the same before The Industrial Revolution, men worked and women stayed at home. Women were also given very little political rights and they had been deprived of one very important right: the right to vote. However, women started becoming more aware during the late 1900’s because they were naturally exposed to a more ambitious lifestyle, very unlike the one that the people had followed before The Industrial Revolution. Soon enough women gathered, all of them were the same, their minds filled with hatred and rebelliousness due to the isolation they had faced during the earlier years. The group had no name but one single motive, to get women the right to vote. They got themselves known as the Suffragettes, in short a very dedicated and grief stricken group of women. Part of the reason that the movement started was because the women in the group had access to a lot more new persuasive devices in order to spread awareness in the community. One such thing was publicity, they could now use the new manufactured goods to make banners and posters to visually spread awareness in the community and open people’s eyes onto the injustice that they had been treated with for many years before the present time. The group also naturally knew that by creating publicity across the nation would cause some kind of stir in the public that was bound to reach the ears of the parliament. They knew that the man dominated parliament would have not let this happen and would immediately start deeming the group members as criminals, they knew that they would be treated harshly in the nations prisons, however they would use this to their advantage to gain sympathy and support from the public and they knew that this could easily overthrow the parliament and cause them to change the laws so that in the end of the whole fiasco they would have to give women more rights than they were given at the moment. The Suffragettes knew all these things, through the booming Industrial Revolution which had unintentionally exposed women to the world outside their man dominated houses The Suffragettes, once they started protesting openly used a variety of different methods to gain the attention of the public and create the sense of rebellion and cause. One of the first methods they used were poster and banners, simple posters and banners with simple yet bold messages written upon them. Some of these messages for example were, FIGHT FOR THE RIGHT TO VOTE, GET WOMEN THE RIGHT TO VOTE, and THE SUFFRAGETTES ARE HERE! Etc. These messages were so simple and so bold that they did have a great effect on the public, the effects were both positive and negative. One of the positive effects was the fact that some oppressed women saw a beacon of hope and joined the Movement so that the club’s numbers swelled from 10-50. One of the negative effects was that dominating men were outraged at the fact that women like their wives had managed to raise a voice and break the silence that was forced upon them. Men like these took the posters down and started complaining to the parliament. As the Suffragettes had anticipated the public had taken the matter to the government. Police officers were deployed all around the cities to prevent members of the group from spreading the message of the campaign. This was the first hurdle for the Suffragettes and they decided that the time for peaceful protests was gone and that they had to take a more direct approach that would target the prized possessions of the public, soon members of the groups started throwing rocks at some important buildings, their ranks swelled as more women joined the group. Seeing this the policemen started arresting any protesting women, or indeed any women that was helping the Suffragettes were arrested. This diminished the morale of some of the women in the group because they started fearing the government and the actions it was taking. However, seeing the increased determination the younger women of the nation left their household to fight for their future. The protests became more violent, soon the Suffragettes were burning buildings down and also targeting the families of some of the higher ranking men in the nation. The government sensed that just arresting the women was not going to stop them, so the government started issuing harsh punishments to the prisoners, many of them were force fed through pipes in order to keep them alive to torture them. The government hoped that by doing this they will have created enough fear in the minds of women in the public so that they would stop joining the Suffragettes. They were wrong, these brutal actions by the government gained sympathy for the group and soon more women than ever were getting arrested because they were helping the movement. In the end of all these actions everything quietened down and the government was forced to rethink their decisions of depriving women of their rights and perhaps change some of their own laws. In did happen in the end though very slowly. This is the section where arguments will be stated about the success of the Suffragettes.
I think that the Suffragettes were successful because 1. They managed to raise an awareness throughout the nation, and later throughout the world that women may be treated unequally in your respective nations and this did turn out true. 2. The women did eventually get the right to vote because various sources state that women in Britain got the right to vote in 1935-1937, after the Suffragette Movement. 3. The Suffragettes also managed to get rid of the oppression that men in Britain and all over the world were putting on women at the workplace and at households, because later on after the movement was over many women did indeed start expressing the desire to work and they were given that allowance by the men in the family. 4. Through their movement Britain did benefit because of the fact that they now had more workers that could work in the factories that were now being built almost every day, these extra workers also helped them during later year such as during World War Two, where the majority of workers working in the plane and weapon factories were women. On the other hand I also think that the Suffragettes failed partially because 1. They did take the lives of some innocent people, who didn’t have any fault, an example of this are some of the younger family members of politicians that were killed or injured grievously during the increasingly violent protests. 2. Though they did secure some rights for women they did not manage to secure any other rights soon enough because even today some countries in the world are still man dominated and don’t give many rights to women at all (more on this in the later section). 3. Some of their ways of protesting were too aggressive and rebellious to the point that sometimes they were no better that the government who laid down the unfair laws, an example of this are the times when they hurt the families of others around the purely to
avenge the hatred that was harboured in their minds and not in the minds of innocent other people. 4. Through the course of the movement many of the women did indeed neglect their own children which could have had an adverse effect on them because of the fact that they weren’t given a good upbringing because of the lack of a mother. For example, a few of the women that were protesting did lose their lives and thus they did essentially abandon their children, such was their thirst to avenge the injustice of all the previous years. In this section I will be talking about the rights of women in my country and I will also be adding whether or not I think that there is true equality between men and women today in my country (India), there has been a fluctuation of progress in women’s rights. Women were give the right to vote in 1935. On the other hand, on 16% of parliament members are women and less than 26% of women are educated throughout India, even today women are considered inferior to men, unless they belong to the super rich. Women in India are still pressured greatly to get married as soon as possible as they are considered as burdens. Such is the revulsion of women in India that more than 30% of the population abort the child if it is a girl. A girl is raped almost every hour and less than 10% of these cases are actually brought to light, why, because of the fact that still in India women are just as oppressed as they were when they didn’t have the vote. In fact I would go on to say the whole situation has gotten worse because of media reactions and the corrupt government. My end answer is that, no I do not think that there is true equality between men and women throughout and world and in my country