Sarah Cornia Research paper HIST 1700 Suffragette Movement Across the Globe

In the 19th century the womans place was set firmly in in the home. Participation in politics in any form was seen as a solely male responsibility; women were forced to obey laws but could not influence them and that conflict became the base for the move for womans suffrage. The fight for equal rights for women was led by Suffragettes, a term used around the world to describe all women who campaigned for the right to vote in elections, they were women advocates for female suffrage. (Trueman, 2013) For wanting the right to vote for laws they had to obey, they were seen as radicals. These women were in many countries across the globe doing whatever was necessary to get their governments to hear their petition. Some of these countries included New Zealand, Australia, Britain, and the United States of America. New Zealand would become the first country to give the right to vote to women. On September, 19 1893 the Electoral Bill was signed into law giving women the right to vote to elect members of the countrys Parliament. Even though the Suffragettes in New Zealand were the first to be successful they still had to do some contesting to reach success. Spurred on by the injustices done to women by the law, the first national organization run by women for women was formed, the Womens Christian Temperance Union, ran by Kate Sheppard. (Grimshaw, 2009) From the early 1800s to 1893 the Womens Christian Temperance Union sent dozens of petitions to the New Zealand Parliament and out of all of those petitions only two remain in the

New Zealand archives. The first of the two is a petition containing 20,000 signatures and was sent to Parliament in 1832 where it failed. The second is the petition called the monster petition that achieved the Womens Christian Temperance Unions goal of 30,000 signatures in 1893. This petition was many separate petitions that were sent all over New Zealand and then sent back to the Christchurch where they were hand pasted together by Kate Sheppard herself. The Monster Petition was presented to Parliament, and for the election of 1893 the women of New Zealand showed up in shocking numbers to become the first women to cast in their votes alongside the men of their country. (New Zealand Parliament, 2010) Encouraged by the win for women in New Zealand suffragettes in Australia doubled their efforts. From the 1880s and through the 1890s each Australian colony had at least one suffragette society. These societies did many things to be heard and to rally other women to the cause including doing organized debates, public meetings and letter-writing campaigns. In 1891, suffragettes including Vida Goldstein, who would go on to be one of four women who were the first in the British Empire to be nominated and to stand for election to a national parliament, (Brownfoot, 1983) gathered 30,000 women's signatures and presented them as a petition to the Victorian Parliament. This petition did not win over the government for women, but it was a stepping stone. On August 23, 1894, Mary Lee who was the secretary of the South Australian Women's Suffrage League, and others presented a petition from 11,600 women in South Australia and the Northern Territory. ( Big Black Dog Communications Pty Ltd, 2010) On December 18, 1894 South Australian women were granted the right to vote and stand for Parliament. The fight didnt end there though, the Suffragettes from Down Under didnt stop until, in 1902 when the Commonwealth Franchise Act was passed, and the whole Australian

Commonwealth became the first country in the world to give women both the right to vote and the right be elected into the federal parliament. (Australian Education Union, 2013) The Suffragette movement in Britain first took off with Millicent Fawcett, she believed in non-violent protest and petition. She wanted to prove that women deserved the right to vote and she thought that if women were to cause trouble by using violence the men would think that women were not responsible enough for voting. With those ideals Millicent formed the Union of Womens Suffrage in 1897. The plan of the Union was one of patience and well thought out arguments, but progress was slow and women became frustrated by the lack of growth. In 1903 the Womens Social and Political Union was founded by Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters Christabel and Sylvia Pankhurst. Throwing Millicent Fawcetts sensible arguments out the window the Pankhursts and other Suffragettes started interrupting political meetings by yelling at the politicians and waving banners, the result of this would be that the women would be painfully escorted out. Refusing to be bullied around the Suffragettes did away with another ideal of Fawcetts, non-violence. Anything or anyone that appeared to be against womens suffrage was targeted. The Suffragettes burned down churches belonging to the Church of England; they vandalized golf courses and Oxford Street; they chained themselves to Buckingham Palace to go against the Royal Family; sailed up the Thames River and shouted at Parliament as it was in session, politicians were attacked on their way to work and their homes were often firebombed. (Trueman, 2013) Their criminal acts often got the Suffragettes arrested, and in 1908 the problem of keeping the Suffragette leaders out of jail was solved when Edith Garrud joined the Womens Social and Political Union. Edith Garrud ran two jiu-jitsu training schools and she formed the Suffragette Bodyguard. The Bodyguard was a thirty strong all-female suffragette defense force.

They were trained in jiu-jitsu and would hide clubs and stones up their dresses and would fight against the police to keep the leaders from arrest. (Islington, 2013) After World War I the work done by women during the war and the fear that the violence of the Suffragettes would return led to the Representation of the People Act of 1918. The Bill was passed and gave women who owned property and were over the age of thirty the right to vote. Ten years later in 1928 English women were given the same voting rights as men with the Equal Franchise Act. (Trueman, 2013) In the United States of America the Suffragette movement started out with the movement to abolish slavery. Many of the American women involved in the abolition of slavery went on to be leaders of the womens suffrage movement. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott were the first movers for the cause and in 1848 the first convention for womens rights was held. The ratification of both the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments angered the womens rights movement, because in both amendments women were excluded. Some Suffragettes still supported the amendments but some women did not. This lead to the creation of the National Woman Suffrage Association, led by Elisabeth Stanton and Susan Anthony, that was against the amendments. The Suffragettes that did support were the American Woman Suffrage Association. Eventually in 1890 the two organizations became one, the National American Woman Suffrage Association. (Marchand, n.d.) The battle for womans suffrage is won state by state. The territory of Wyoming is the first to give full suffrage to women in 1869 and is also the first to have a woman government official. American Suffragettes did everything they could to have their cause heard and to find support. Once a year, starting from 1869, the organized Suffragettes presented at signed petition for womens suffrage to Washington D.C. Suffragette organizations held pageants, street

speaking, demonstrations, and parades. One of the most famous parades was on Monday, March 3, 1913 when twenty-four floats, four mounted brigades, nine bands, three heralds, and more than five thousand marchers paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue. Crowds swarmed the marchers and clogged the street and around one hundred marchers had to be taken to the hospital. (Harvey, 2003) Women got increasingly more aggressive with their protests, on one occasion they interrupted President Wilsons speech to Congress by holding up a banner for their cause. An editorial was published on December 7, 1916 in the Washington Post, about the event and was titled Suffrage Heckling. The author of the editorial describes the womens act discourteous because the President had already given his stance on womens suffrage, that it should be earned on a state level. (Washington Post, 1916) Another radical move was when the National Womens Party picketed the White House for months, an act that got many of them arrested. But their arrests only got the Suffragettes more attention. (The Library of Congress, n.d.) Through acts like that one the Suffragettes got the support of political leaders including President Wilson. In 1919 both houses in Congress approved giving women the right to vote and in 1920 the thirty-six necessary states ratified the nineteenth amendment, and the Suffragettes had won right to vote in all elections throughout the nation. The Amendment states The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. (Constitution of the United States: Amendment Nineteen) Despite being in different parts of the world and fighting for their own country the Suffragettes across the globe stood for the same things and were united. In Britain and in the United States when arrested, Suffragettes would go on hunger strikes in the name of their cause. Every country had its leading ladies and thousands of following Suffragettes. They had the same beliefs that women played just as big of a part as men and that they deserved to be able to have a

say in their own governments. Even though the battle for suffrage waged in their own countries Suffragettes traveled the globe to offer and receive support and encouragement. There were many organizations and meetings made in the name of international womens suffrage including the International Woman's Rights Congress, the International Council of Women, and the International Women Suffrage Alliance. In 1902, Australias own Vida Goldstein along with Suffragettes from ten nations, travelled to the United States of America for the International Woman Suffrage Conference. Vida Goldstein also spoke and gave evidence in support of woman suffrage to a committee of United States Congress and attended the International Council of Women Conference. (Brownfoot, 1983) In the womens suffrage parade down Pennsylvania Avenue the first section of Suffragette marchers was made up of women from other countries that had given the vote women. (Harvey, 2003) Even American Suffragettes Alice Paul, Harriet Stanton Blatch, and Lucy Burns, spent time with the British Suffrage movement. (The Library of Congress, n.d.) Women fought all over the world for their suffrage. Suffragettes sacrificed everything for their cause. They went door to door asking for signatures for petitions, marched, fought, got arrested, went on hunger strikes, carrier banners, picketed and even blew things up. In the nineteenth century the womens right to vote was something that had to be earned and the Suffragettes of New Zealand, Australia, Britain and the United States of America, fought and earned it. Those countries played big roles in womens suffrage and now stand as examples for the places where women dont have suffrage today. Battles for womens suffrage were won country by country but it was and is an international movement and an international war for equality.

References
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