CONCLUSION * AFTER 1918 ...

 

After the passing of the Qualification of Women Act in 1918 (Representation of the People Act) the NUWSS and WSPU disbanded.

A new organisation called the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship was established. As well as advocating the same voting rights as men, the organisation also campaigned for equal pay, fairer divorce laws and an end to the discrimination against women in the professions.

In 1919 Parliament passed the Sex Disqualification Removal Act which made it illegal to exclude women from jobs because of their sex. Women could now become solicitors, barristers and magistrates. Later that year, Nancy Astor became the first woman in England to become a MP when she won Sutton, Plymouth in a by-election.

Five years later Bondfield became the first woman in history to gain a place in the British Cabinet.

A bill was introduced in March 1928 to give women the vote on the same terms as men.

There was little opposition in Parliament to the bill and it became law on 2nd July 1928.

As a result, all women over the age of 21 could now vote in elections.

Many of the women who had fought for this right were now dead including Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, Barbara Bodicho, Emily Davie, Elizabeth Wolstenholme-Elmy, Constance Lytton and Emmeline Pankhurst .

Millicent Fawcett, the leader of the NUWSS during the campaign for the vote (Suffragist), was still alive and had the pleasure of attending Parliament to see the vote take place.

 

The leaders of the moderate wings of the British and American suffrage movements were President Carrie Chapman Catt and first Vice-President Millicent Fawcett of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance.

They are seen here at the 1913 Budapest meeting of the Alliance.

Fawcett is seated, front left; Catt is next to her.

 

That night she wrote in her diary:

"It is almost exactly 61 years ago since I heard John Stuart Mill introduce his suffrage amendment to the Reform Bill on May 20th, 1867. So I have had extraordinary good luck in having seen the struggle from the beginning." Millicent Fawcett