Comparison Fo Emmeline Pankhurst And World War 2

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In 1918 women over 30 had finally been granted the right to vote in political elections. But there is much controversy to whether the granting of the vote was the outcome of Emmeline Pankhurst’s persistent campaigns or due to the impact of WW1. In this essay I will be comparing these two opinions and concluding with an answer. Emmeline Pankhurst founded the WSPU (the suffragettes) after being angered and disappointed with Millicent Fawcett’s patient and peaceful protest. Emmeline and many women believed that being arrested and using the media was better way of getting things done. This approach meant many knew who they were and their aims. But an important fact was that many thought that this was not helping their cause and that it discouraged people to support and even consider votes for women. For instance if we consider the quote of Lloyd George in Source 1, who was one of the small number of men who agreed on votes for women, but believed that their way of campaigning was not encouraging anyone to give them the vote. The reaction of the public, mainly the men is shown in the quotations of Source 2 and 3. When reading them we can see that many people felt intimidated by the women’s campaign which did not help them succeed in winning the vote. Although it should be noted that source 3 was from the Times which was against the votes for women; so it’s probably a bias source of information, due to the Times’ belief in the domestic role of women. But this is not important as it still spoke the truth about the unnecessary need of violence while campaigning for the votes for women which would soon be solved by the effort many put in during the WW1. Unlike Emmeline, I think WW1 helped people see beyond the women’s violent actions, and begin to see that women were ready to have the right to vote and be considered as able as men in many ways. With the men away
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