"The Women's Suffrage Movement in England"

Turner, Edward Raymond. 'The Women's Suffrage Movement In England'. The American Political Science Review 7.4 (1913): 588 - 609. Web. 10 Sept. 2015.

• "Since 1905 it has come to be realised that British men and women are face to face with a change of profound importance"
• "In the seventeenth century some women attempted to influence the conduct of parliamentary affairs"
• "Toward the end of the eighteenth century in the days of revolutionists and liberal thinkers, women's interest in government began to be formally urged"
• "In 1797 Fox, speaking in the house of commons against a too wide extension if suffrage, declared that the superior class of women were far better qualified to vote than the lower class of men"
• "In 1847 appeared thw first women's suffrage hand-bill, asserting that good government was impossible unless both sexes were represented"

In 1848, Disraeli "speaking in parliament, declared that in a country governed by a woman and where women had possessed so many privileges of property and jurisdiction" ... "she has not a right to vote". As England had a female monarch, Disraeli believed it would be unfair (to men) to allow women the right to vote as well - it would tip the power balance too much and so many of the early attempts at the women's movement were ignored.

1857 the work of a Quakeress, Anne Kent, led to the formation of the Sheffield Female Political Association - the first suffrage organisation.

John Stuart Mill became the apostle of the cause - which brought it a lot of attention,

In 1817, even a critic who did not support the cause said that it "had reached a point from which it cannot recede" and that it would be "almost impossible" for it not to advance.

"Women have been rising as men have been rising; and they have advances less rapidly because bound more straightly by the past"

"The most important factors in this development have been through the achieving of a partial economic enfranchisement and the gaining of intellectual freedom through education".

Turner and Wolf pretty much reached the same conclusion and they were writing more than fifty years apart. Women only seemed intellectually inferior because they were denied access to the knowledge men had.

"It seems certain that many of the inequalities were designed to protect women more than to depress them"

"Otherwise women who were unmarried had the same legal status as men, except in the inheritance of entailed estates". The key word is 'legal'. There were many social constructs women felt they had to adhere too or suffer 'shame' on their family and themselves. This 'legal' status probably would have been uncommon anyway as women often married young.

"By marriage, the husband and the wife were one person in law and the existence of the woman was merged absolutely in that of her partner" to whom "she owed obedience" and "for whose murder she would be guilty of treason". It seems rather than marriage being an equal union, as it is today, women because more like their husband's property. The woman's property and revenue of her estates became her husbands' and she had almost no legal standing when it came to her children, divorce or slander.

"Of all the changes which contributed to the uplifting of women, education, and particularly higher education, was the most important". This lead to women being able to access more professions in the future. It is a common opinion that women only appeared the "lesser" of the sexes because of their lack of (access to) knowledge, rather than lack of intellect. Of course some women, (who would have been unmarried) worked during the industrial revolution. Having an education made women feel more independent and gradually they started to consider their wages their own - even though it would have been a mere fraction of what a man would be paid. 

Turner also argues that the fact that there were more women than men contributed to the gain in momentum for the women's movement. 

"The position of women in England was not that of men, and the inequalities were endured less willingly as women obtained knowledge and financial independence". 

As there were more women than men in England, it meant that a lot of them could't marry - there simply weren't enough men and same sex/gay marriage certainly didn't exist. However, some of the more educated women were the ones choosing not to marry. Their minds were occupied with the women's movement and they believed that obtaining the vote was what they needed to bring necessary change. 

John Stuart Mill was an advocate for women's suffrage but it was a "novelty which encountered ridicule more than respect". In essence, Turner suggests that Mill became the movements' "champion" and brought the matter before parliament. 

In 1866, there was the introduction of the "representation of the people's bill". The following year, Mill argued that women were "neither unfit nor dangerous" and that their suffrage would not "interfere with her work", so they should be equally represented by the bill. Mill also argued that "unless women are raised to the level of men, men will be pulled down to theirs". The amendment was eventually rejected but the cause was taken up by a few of his associates and new advocates.

Jacob Bright brought forward the women's disabilities bill in 1870, which was the first women's suffrage measure to be presented in England. Once again however, it was lost after being thoroughly debated. This was true for numerous bills for women's suffrage - most of them were never considered at all. 

In 1884 "strenuous efforts were made for an amendment to the pending reform bill so that women might be included". Also in that year, and every year for the next decade, Lord Denman presented in the House of Lords, a bill to extend the right to vote to women at parliamentary elections. However, Denman never made progress on the matter because "the objection usually urged that Lords should not first consider a measure affecting the House of Commons".

After 45 years of the issue of women's suffrage being brought before the House of Commons and thoroughly discussed, still no progress was made. Curiously, most of the bills that had been presented to the commons, to do with women's suffrage, had actually had heavy majorities on the second reading and over time, the majority were in favour of such measures anyway, Still, no progress was made. The cause did however, gain more advocates and supporters. Turner goes on to say the thing that divided the advocates in the great parties in the House of Commons, was that they could not decide whether women's suffrage was a government measure. 

"In 1911 Mr F.E. Smith, in a debate on the parliament bill, asserted that if the prime minister would give facilities for full parliamentary discussion, women's suffrage would be carried into a law within two years".
The various bills introduced into parliament after this all had a common aim: to allow women to vote in elections for members of the house of commons and "the avowed objects was to remove disabilities resulting merely from sex". However, many forms of achieving this were discussed. For example, only allowing thirteen women to every one hundred men, or shortly after that it was discussed that no more than 400,000 names would be added to the lists. Even a year previously, it was discussed that no more than 1,000,000 women, or one women to every seven men could be allowed to vote. Other bills proposed that women be married, some proposed that they be widows or "spinsters". After years of debate and rejections, it would seem that the agreed upon decision would be adult suffrage. However, it wasn't until after WW1 that women officially got the vote. 

"Some things affect women particularly, and there are some which men can never understand as they do".

"Whenever in the past there have been proposals to increase the electorate, the novelty of the thing has aroused distrust..." - "opposition preceded all attempts to remove disabilities from Catholics, Jews, Dissenters and Irish" - "in no instance have the disasters followed which were predicted".

"Participation in politics and interests in larger things would make her finer and happier, a more admirable human being"
"She would receive more honour and respect because she deserved it"

"It is urged" that "the place of woman is primarily  in the home.." and "the tasks outside are for the most part man's". 

Society thought that it was a fine balance and that "any undue enlargement of the duties" would be "detrimental to the interests of the other". 

Turner says that it is in the nature of women to be "hasty, emotional, subject to influence, and at times, not capable of just decision". He also claims that the "success of English institutions" and "growth of England's power are due to the resolute steadiness of Englishmen" - supposedly, all of which would "be lost if feminine whim and impulse interfered into government". 

As Turner is a man, writing from a position of privilege, the validity of his statement should be questioned. Turner never experienced laws specifically made to oppress him and without having the experience, is it fair for him, or any other male, to decide how a female should respond to these conditions?

"The admission of women to the parliamentary franchise would mean the ultimate domination of women over men in England". Turner is literally saying that men are afraid of the change in power which women's suffrage could potentially bring. These men were letting fear of what they thought could happen dictate their decisions. At no point had the aim of the women's movement been to 'overthrow' men. 

Turner states "women do not need the vote, nor is it well for them to have it" but "women should full civil equality and, if need be, local political rights," but not "have a part in the government of the realm". 

To an extent, Turner contradicts himself. Assuming he shared a similar point of view to most 'liberal thinking' men of his time, most men were in agreement that women were not inferior and they deserve some say in the way society is run - just not enough of a say that would make any real difference in "a man's world".  

I chose to analyse a text written by a man in the early 1900s because it shows a different opinion on the women's movement to more recent studies. So far, I haven't been able to find many reliable texts from the early stages of the women's movement - I'm not sure whether it wasn't deemed worth recording or whether anything written by a woman was scrapped. I find it interesting that Turner begins the text talking about all the male advocates the women's movement had, especially in the house of commons and of which I have never heard of before. Turner makes no mention of female suffragists like Emmeline Pankhurst or Emily Davidson and from what I understand, Turner argues that the women's movement was a topic of discussion in the house of commons for over fifty years, yet nothing was achieved this way. Although there were male advocates for the cause, it seems they were rarely very outspoken about it and still didn't believe women deserved enough power to make any real changes to society.