#pankhurst

Sylvia Pankhurst received two mentions at the Unfinished Business exhibition held at the British Library, but not for her role with the Suffragette movement, as one might expect. Whilst the curators referenced her involvement with the Votes for Women campaign, their focus revealed the scandal caused by her “illegitimate” child with an Italian man who she lived with but never married. Her mother, Emmeline Pankhurst (1858-1928), despite being a campaigner for women’s rights, disowned her daughter. The exhibition also displayed a painting by Sylvia Pankhurst, inspired by the harsh conditions of women’s workplaces in the early 20th century.

SUFFRAGETTE  ★★★★✩

After a 2 year procrastination we finally saw Suffragette for the celebration of women’s day, and we liked it!

I especially loved the idea of displaying an in-between time, 1912, which wasn’t the women fight’s beginning (it started in 1869 and escalated in 1903 thanks to Pankhurst) nor its end (we got our right to vote only 16 years later). I also loved that the heroine was not the movement’s leader but just a simple laundry worker, who initially doesn’t care about the issue - “’Ive never thought about what vote would mean to me” - but slowly slips into activism while she starts to see “another way of living this life”. I found it an empowering choice for all women that stresses the importance of taking action personally instead of relying on others. Sure, being an activist isn’t a bed of roses, let alone being a suffragette in the 1910’s, they had the whole patriarchal society against them (and a fair share of women too), they got humiliated, beaten, they went to jail, but ultimately, their courage took over and we now live how we live only because of them.

February 6, 1918 - Representation of the People Act Gives Vote to All British Men Over 21 and Women Over 30 

Pictured - The suffragette movement and wartime female work were vital to passing the act, but the actual gain was rather conservative. Only women over 30 were given the vote, so many women who actually served were not enfranchised. Women did not achieve full suffrage in Britain until 1928.

In an overwhelming vote on February 6 the House of Commons passed the Representation of the People Act, which tripled the British electorate by giving the vote to all men from 21 and women from 30 who met minimum property qualifications. Before this only about 60% of British men had been voters, which required either paying at least an annual rent of £10 or holding land worth that much.

No one person was probably as responsible for the Act as Emmeline Pankhurst, leader of the Women’s Social and Political Union, a suffragist movement that used mass rallies, hunger strikes, and window-breaking to force MPs to respond. Pankhurst had been jailed multiple times. When the war came, however, Pankhurst turned into the fiercest patriot, urging women to work as nurses or in factories, and encouraging the “White Feather campaign” that shamed men who had not volunteered before the imposition of conscription. This proved to be an ingenious move. By highlighting the service of women and showing that many men refused to serve, Pankurst deconstructed the idea that citizenship was solely male. If men did not sacrifice for their country, why should they have the vote while women who served did not? The tactics worked, as February 6 showed.

Emily Wilding Davison (1872-1913) was a passionate advocate for women’s right to vote in early 20th-century Britain. She was a member of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) and took militant actions to fight for her cause. Over the years, she was arrested nine times and endured hunger strikes on seven occasions, during which she was force-fed 49 times. Tragically, Emily lost her life at…

Adela Pankhurst