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Women s Movement s and Ideologies in the long 19th Century Krista Cowman School of History and Heritage, University of Lincoln, Lincoln, UK Abstract Individual calls for increased social, economic and political rights for women grew from the eighteenth century, with a distinct women s movement identifiable from the mid-nineteenth century. This essay traces some of the key campaigns that fed into the broader women s movement and outlines some of the main feminist ideologies that shaped and influenced this movement up to the point of equal enfranchisement in 1928. The publication of Mary Wollstonecraft s text A Vindication of the Rights of Women in 1792 is often seen as the founding moment of feminism in Britain. While feminism as a term was not used until the mid-nineteenth century, the first sign of what might be considered a feminist movement came with the late eighteenth-century enlightenment. Women actively participated in many of the salons and debating clubs where enlightenment ideas were discussed and disseminated. Most prominent among these were the Bluestockings, a group of women who met in Elizabeth Montagu s homes in London and Bath to discuss literature and other intellectual matters (Eger, 2013). Wollstonecraft s book, which still privileged women s domestic role but was highly critical of the contemporary education available for girls, prompted the identification of collective support, known as the Wollstonecraft School (Taylor, 2003, p. 182). The sense of an emerging movement was heightened through publications of other authors such as Mary Hays and Catherine Macaulay whose writings were critical of women s social, political and sexual subordination. These ideas set the context for the nineteenth-century feminist movement, now often referred to as the first wave of feminism. Women began to participate in a number of political campaigns. In the anti-slavery movement they used their domestic influence to support William Fox s abstention campaign, which aimed to undermine the economic arguments for slavery through boycotts. After slavery was abolished in 1807 women continued to campaign more broadly in groups such as the Ladies Society for the Relief of Negro Slaves set up by Lucy Townsend in Birmingham in 1825. Many similar local groups were formed, allowing women to campaign actively on this issue in their own communities (Midgely, 1992; Twells, 2009). Women were active in campaigns to repeal the Corn Laws in the 1830s and 1840s. These laws, passed in 1815 and refined in subsequent years, protected grain prices for domestic producers but worked against the interests of many urban industrialists who suffered from high food prices. The Anti-Corn Law League accepted women as members, and they ran many of its campaigns including a Grand Bazaar in Covent Garden in 1845 which was said to be the largest political fund-raising event ever
2 Women s Movement s and Ideologies in the long 19th Century held. Like the Anti-Slavery movement, the Anti-Corn Law League enabled women to develop a political position from their domestic role and connect the worlds of home and politics (Tyrell, 1980). Although the League often used the concept of woman s mission to legitimize women s protests, its members were keen to take on broader issues, and develop a politicized interpretation of women s domestic responsibilities (Morgan, 2000; Twells, 2009). A similar approach was taken by the women who joined the Chartist movement to campaign for political reform in the 1830s and 1840s. Chartist women often organized in their own separate women s associations. They often concentrated their efforts on activities that were considered more appropriately feminine such as designing and stitching the movement s elaborate banners, or following the example of the Anti-Slavery campaign in encouraging boycotts of businesses unsympathetic to the aims of the Charter. Some went further, however, and a number were involved in violent demonstrations in support of the physical force wing of the movement (Clark, 1995, p. 227; Thompson, 1984, p. 141; Schwarzkopf, 1991, p. 195). All of these examples brought women into public activity, but in campaigns which were not specifically aimed at achieving improvements for women alone. From the middle of the nineteenth century a number of distinct campaigns emerged involving women who were agitating for better conditions for their own sex. For the first time, women could be seen working together in networks that formed a more distinctive movement. Many of these coalesced around the English Woman s Journal, an early feminist paper founded by Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon and Bessie Rayner Parkes in 1858 as a platform for discussing women s political concerns. The journal s offices at Langham Place, supplied by Theodosia, Lady Monson, became the centre of a number of activities including a coffee shop, a meeting room and campaigning groups such as the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women. Regular attenders included Emily Davies whose campaigns for women s education led to the opening of Girton College, Cambridge, and Emily Faithfull who set up the Victoria Press and trained young girls as printers and journalists. A second group, the Kensington Debating Society, emerged in 1865. This was a more radical society which tackled controversial issues such as women s suffrage. Although it met in London it welcomed corresponding members and thus brought provincial members into closer contact with each other. These early first-wave feminists campaigned for equality for women in a number of areas. Many took their cue from Wollstonecraft and called for improved access to education, founding secondary schools and finally colleges for girls. Better educational opportunities produced well-qualified women who in turn demanded equal access to professions such as medicine. Other feminists directed their energies into reducing legal inequalities between the sexes. Nineteenth-century wives had very little rights over their own personal property until the Married Women s Property Committee succeeded in bringing about changes to the law. These comprised a series of Married Women s Property Acts in 1870, 1881 (Scotland) and 1882 (England, Wales and Ireland). Josephine Butler s Ladies National Association turned its attention to the sexual double standard enshrined in the Contagious Diseases Acts, passed in 1864, 1866 and 1869, which held prostitutes responsible for the spread of venereal disease while ignoring the role of men. These were eventually repealed in 1886, after a lengthy campaign. Some campaigning women took their energies into different arenas. Frances Power Cobbe, who had worked with the Married Women s Property Committee, campaigned against domestic violence; her article Wife Torture in England was influential in the passing of the Matrimonial Causes Act in 1878 which gave women greater rights to judicial separation and maintenance. Cobbe also initiated a campaign against vivisection and campaigned for animal rights, a cause which attracted many early feminist activists. Other women became involved in the British Women s Temperance Association, formed in Newcastle in 1876. Although
Women s Movement s and Ideologies in the long 19th Century 3 temperance was mainly associated with curbing alcohol consumption, the impact of excessive drinking on working-class families in particular including child poverty and domestic violence was seen as an issue of special interest to women. Women were able to benefit from a number of changes to local government that gave them opportunity to participate in politics from the later nineteenth century. From 1870 they were allowed to vote for, and stand for election to the School Boards which oversaw state education across the country. Women also served on the Boards of Guardians, the bodies charged with administering the Poor Law at local level. Another feminist body, the Society for Promoting the Return of Women as Poor Law Guardians, encouraged their candidacy. While guardians work fitted well with what were considered areas of feminine expertise such as care for the sick or elderly or for children, it could also be highly political. As elected bodies the Boards required public elections, and women stood and campaigned in these both as independent candidates and as representatives of political parties. Further, local government reform brought them the right to stand for election to local councils (Hollis, 1987). The campaign for women s suffrage which emerged from the 1860s drew feminists from a number of campaigns and causes together and united them behind the single issue of the Parliamentary vote. Many feminists believed that the vote was essential if they were to bring about further reform. Parliamentary reform was in the air, with a Second Reform Act (following from that of 1832) in 1867 opening up the franchise to more men. Previous feminist victories around the Married Women s Property Acts and the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts had required the help of sympathetic men in order to pass into law. Others felt it was deeply ironic that women could both decide on and implement legislation at a local level while still being denied the opportunity to do so nationally. John Stuart Mill presented the first petition for women s suffrage to Parliament in June 1866. He had asked for 100 names to be added, but ended up with over 1,500, collected by women across the country. A number of small suffrage committees formed in London, Bristol, Edinburgh, Manchester and elsewhere. National groups also developed, and all combined into the National Union of Women s Suffrage Societies from 1897, under the leadership of Millicent Garret Fawcett. In 1903 the Women s Social and Political Union (WSPU) was set up in Manchester by Emmeline Pankhurst and some of her colleagues in the Independent Labour Party. The WSPU soon embraced militant tactics that ranged from heckling politicians at public meetings to window smashing and arson. Thousands of its members went to prison in pursuit of the campaign for the vote. While the main division in the suffrage campaign was between its militant and constitutional wings, there were a number of other societies involved. Some of these organized nationally such as the Women s Freedom League and the People s Suffrage Federation. Others were restricted to certain areas (such as the Forward Cymric Suffrage Union in Wales), religious affiliations (including the Church League for Women s Suffrage) or occupations (for example the Actresses Franchise League). By 1914 there were over 50 separate suffrage groups active across Britain. The outbreak of war in 1914 curtailed the most active phase of the suffrage movement but did not end it completely. The Women s Social and Political Union officially stopped its campaign but a number of women dissented and set up the Independent Suffragettes and Suffragettes of the WSPU to keep the suffrage flag flying. The National Union of Women s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) encouraged its members to volunteer for war work as a means of demonstrating their fitness for citizenship. Suffrage campaigners sponsored key wartime initiatives including the Scottish Women s Hospitals Association which sent doctors and nursing staff to work at the front and staffed a number of field hospitals. Others became strong pacifists and participated in the work of the Women s International League for Peace
4 Women s Movement s and Ideologies in the long 19th Century and Freedom. The NUWSS also supported the women s patrols that were aimed at safeguarding the morals of young girls affected by khaki fever and became the forerunners of women police officers. Women received a limited parliamentary franchise in the 1918 Representation of the People Act when the vote was given to all women over the age of 30 who met the property qualifications required of local government voters. (The same act gave votes to all men over 21 with no further qualification.) Feminists kept up a strong campaign for equal votes, finally achieving this in 1928. They now had the ideal platform from which to present their case. The Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act which was passed in 1918 made it possible for women to stand for election to Parliament (ironically from the age of 21, making it possible for a woman with no Parliamentary vote to serve as an MP). Seventeen women stood although only one, Constance Marcievicz, was elected (and did not take her seat in line with the policy of her party, Sinn Fein). Nancy Astor became the first woman to sit in Parliament in 1919. By 1929 (the first election when women could vote on equal terms with men) she was joined by 13 other successful women MPs. The presence of women in Parliament encouraged broader political changes. The Liberal and Conservative Parties began to admit women as equal members (up to this point they had only been eligible to join auxiliary organizations). The Independent Labour Party had welcomed women members since its formation in 1892, and the Labour Party continued this when it moved to a system of individual rather than affiliate membership in 1918. A series of legislative reforms relating to women were passed including the Sex Disqualification Removal Act (1919) which finally opened up professions to women, the Matrimonial Causes Act (1923) which made divorce more equal and accessible and the Guardianship of Infants Act (1925) which gave mothers equal rights to fathers over their own children. First-wave feminism contained a number of competing ideologies, although these were often quite successfully united within single-issue campaigns. One prominent strand was Equal Rights Feminism (sometimes called Liberal Feminism), which argued for complete equality between the sexes. Theorists such as John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor developed their analysis, based on the arguments of Wollstonecraft, and argued in particular for reform of marriage laws and wider access to education for girls. Another strand of feminism believed that women were innately superior to men. Josephine Butler s Ladies National Association was one prominent group whose members identified themselves closely with this position through the ideology of social purity, which was concerned with numerous moral questions including prostitution, eugenics and sexuality. Through organizations such as the National Vigilance Association women campaigned to reduce not just prostitution but broader sexual immoralities and looked to more repressive actions such as closing down music halls. The WSPU leader Christabel Pankhurst drew on this tradition in 1913 when she published The Great Scourge and How to End it, a polemical investigation into venereal disease which led her to call for votes for women and chastity for men from 1913. Social purity feminism encouraged women s involvement in temperance organizations where they again took a leading role running their own societies such as the British Women s Temperance Association, arranging public meetings and petitions and developing an analysis which emphasized the gendered aspects of problem drinking which often kept many working-class wives and their children in poverty. While all types of first-wave feminism concentrated on gendered inequalities, some took a more intersectional position. Socialist feminists were particularly concerned with the position of working-class women in society. They derived their analysis from the work of socialist theorists such as August Bebel and Frederich Engels, who described common origins for sexual and class inequality. Consequently they were critical of feminist analyses that were
Women s Movement s and Ideologies in the long 19th Century 5 aimed towards improving the conditions of middle-class women (for example equal access to professions which would have little or no impact on working-class women who had no chance of higher education, or votes for women on the same grounds that they were available to men which would preclude many working-class voters of both sexes). Socialist feminism was a strongly international movement. Women associated with the Second International (an international grouping of socialist and Marxist parties set up in 1889) worked together on a number of campaigns including the first International Women s Day, which began in 1909. Theorists such as Clara Zetkin and Alexandra Kollontoi campaigned for equal rights for women but also argued that these should not be through measures that privileged middle and upper-class women at the expense of working-class men. In Britain, although the WSPU grew from socialist feminists in the Independent Labour Party, some socialist feminists opposed its demand for votes for women on equal terms with men as the franchise before 1918 remained based on property qualifications. During the First World War, the international links of many socialist feminists were expanded by women who opposed the war. Feminist Pacifism argued that women had a special responsibility to try to prevent war through their position as mothers and also as noncombatants. Personal contacts within the women s section of the Second International helped convene the International Congress of Women in the Hague in 1915. British delegates included the former WSPU treasurer Emmeline Pethick Lawrence and Chrystal Macmillan from the NUWSS. The Congress gave birth to the Women s International League for Peace and Freedom which continues to campaign for peace today. Two further distinctive ideologies emerged in the wake of the First World War, when limited suffrage removed the need for a unified single campaign for the vote. Equality (or old ) feminists called for full equality with men in all areas of life. Its demands were loudly voiced through a number of organizations in the 1920s including the Women s Freedom League (a former suffrage society) the Six Point Group and the Open Door Council. The Six Point Group was set up by ex-suffragette Margaret Haig, and aimed to encourage women to use their votes strategically and effectively. Its name derived from its simple platform of six points (satisfactory legislation on child assault, for unmarried mothers and their children and for widowed mothers, equal guardianship rights for mothers and fathers, equal pay for men and women teachers and equality of opportunity for men and women in the civil service). When a point was achieved, it was replaced by another. The Group used Haig s journal, Time and Tide to aid its campaigns including publishing blacklists of MPs who voted against the points. The Open Door Council was largely concerned with women s rights and equality at work. New or welfare feminism (which picked up on a nineteenth-century belief that women were equal but different ) questioned the achievability of equality feminism s aims within the context of woman s reproductive role. Eleanor Rathbone, who took over the presidency of the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship (the former NUWSS) in 1919, was among its strongest supporters, arguing that women should be recognized as a separate group whose needs were not identical to those of men. New and equality feminists divided over two particular issues. New feminists were committed to the introduction of family allowances. Eleanor Rathbone (who in her later Parliamentary career was one of the strongest advocates for this reform) argued that these would offer married women economic independence and encourage them to become more active citizens. While few equality feminists opposed family allowances, they preferred to emphasize the need for equal pay. Both groups also differed over the issue of protective legislation when it was offered to women but not men. Thus they campaigned against the 1924 Factories Bill which sought to reduce the working day for women without changing it for men.
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