Search results
People also ask
What did women do in the 19th century?
Why was women's history inconceivable in the 19th century?
How did women influence society in the 19th century?
What role did gender play in the 19th century?
- Women in the 19th Century: Further Reading.
- Women in the 19th Century: Early Feminists.
- Women in the 19th Century: An Overview.
- Women in the 16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries: Women in Literature.
19th Century Feminist Movements. What has come to be called the first wave of the feminist movement began in the mid 19th century and lasted until the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920, which gave women the right to vote.
- Miliann Kang, Donovan Lessard, Laura Heston
- 2017
- Overview
- Great Britain
The women’s suffrage movement fought for the right of women by law to vote in national or local elections.
When did the women's suffrage movement start?
The women’s suffrage movement made the question of women’s voting rights into an important political issue in the 19th century. The struggle was particularly intense in Great Britain and in the United States, but those countries were not the first to grant women the right to vote, at least not on a national basis.
Where did women’s suffrage start?
By the early years of the 20th century, women had won the right to vote in national elections in New Zealand (1893), Australia (1902), Finland (1906), and Norway (1913). World War I and its aftermath speeded up the enfranchisement of women in the countries of Europe and elsewhere. In the period 1914–39, women in 28 additional countries acquired either equal voting rights with men or the right to vote in national elections.
How did the women's suffrage movement end?
In Great Britain woman suffrage was first advocated by Mary Wollstonecraft in her book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) and was demanded by the Chartist movement of the 1840s. The demand for woman suffrage was increasingly taken up by prominent liberal intellectuals in England from the 1850s on, notably by John Stuart Mill and his wife, Harriet. The first woman suffrage committee was formed in Manchester in 1865, and in 1867 Mill presented to Parliament this society’s petition, which demanded the vote for women and contained about 1,550 signatures. The Reform Bill of 1867 contained no provision for woman suffrage, but meanwhile woman suffrage societies were forming in most of the major cities of Britain, and in the 1870s these organizations submitted to Parliament petitions demanding the franchise for women and containing a total of almost three million signatures.
Are you a student? Get Britannica Premium for only 24.95 - a 67% discount!
Learn More
The succeeding years saw the defeat of every major suffrage bill brought before Parliament. This was chiefly because neither of the leading politicians of the day, William Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli, cared to affront Queen Victoria’s implacable opposition to the women’s movement. In 1869, however, Parliament did grant women taxpayers the right to vote in municipal elections, and in the ensuing decades women became eligible to sit on county and city councils. The right to vote in parliamentary elections was still denied to women, however, despite the considerable support that existed in Parliament for legislation to that effect. In 1897 the various suffragist societies united into one National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, thus bringing a greater degree of coherence and organization to the movement. Out of frustration at the lack of governmental action, however, a segment of the woman suffrage movement became more militant under the leadership of Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughter Christabel. After the return to power of the Liberal Party in 1906, the succeeding years saw the defeat of seven suffrage bills in Parliament. As a consequence, many suffragists became involved in increasingly violent actions as time went on. These women militants, or suffragettes, as they were known, were sent to prison and continued their protests there by engaging in hunger strikes.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
In the 19th century, women’s history would have been inconceivable, because “history” was so closely identified with war, diplomacy, and high politics—from all of which women were virtually excluded.
Women such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Emmeline Pankhurst became prominent figures, leading marches, protests, and advocating for equal voting rights. Their relentless efforts finally paid off, resulting in the suffrage victory for women in several countries.
The women’s rights movement of the late 19th century went on to address the wide range of issues spelled out at the Seneca Falls Convention. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and women like Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and Sojourner Truth traveled the country lecturing and organizing for the next forty years.
The women’s rights movement can be thought to have begun in the 1830s with Sarah and Angelina Grimke, abolitionists who spoke out for women’s rights, or in the later 1840s, with the women’s rights convention held in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848.
