http://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/electionsvoting/womenvote/overview/startsuffragette-/
Early feminists, known as Suffragettes or Suffragists began what would be an ongoing battle for gender equality in the late 1800s. At the time however, their goal was to get women the vote. Anything more than that wasn't tackled until after WWI and even then, they only addressed female issues.
The violent acts of the Suffragettes gave the cause a lot of attention, and although not everybody agreed with them, it brought in more support for the cause.
The Suffragists believed in peaceful protesting and were possibly the ones responsible for building up the legal and constitutional support for women. Would they have been able to achieve this without the attention brought in by the Suffragettes however?
Although one group did not especially agree with the others method, their work paid off and women were given the right to vote in 1918 - almost 40 years after they started campaigning.
Changes to womens rights throughout history have been little and far between. In the last 150 years, it has been roughly 20 years between each major change.
For example:
1918 - Women's right to vote
1940s - After WWII some (but very few) women were able to go to work
1970-80s - Women campaign for equality in the workplace, legalised abortion etc.
From the onset, change has been very difficult to achieve. Does this have anything to do with the accessibility of the movements? The internet as we know it did not exist so there weren't many platforms for discussion without fear of discrimination.
How did they spread the word about the cause and how effective was it?
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