More than a million more

The Women's Enfranchisement Bill of May 1911 is an amendment of the same bill of 1910. It's plugged through Parliament again and again, with small alterations until eventually, in 1918, it goes through and women over 30 get the vote. The major difference between the 1911 version and the one before is that a slightly different group of women are under discussion: fewer 'ladies' and more working women, leading to a proposed proportion within the voting class of one woman for every seven men.

I warm to the proposer, George Kemp - 'I believe that at the present time the nation suffers a loss by the exclusion of capable women from the power to select Members of Parliament... we have no extra talent to throw away... we cannot afford to do without them.' But what actually catches my attention is a worry that's resonating through the House - the worry that eventually all women would end up voting. And the reason for this worry? In the words of Mr MacKinder - in the UK, '...you have more than a million more women than men.'

There are still over a million more women than men: the ratio is 95 to 100. The question about what is changed by having a large corpus of women voters is interesting - but it hasn't produced the sort of coup MacKinder is worried about. For me, however, this population statistic puts a new perspective on the whole story of women's liberation. 

As a woman, as a participant in that story, I feel, rhetorically, like one of a struggling minority. Women who are 'firsts' - first students, first MPs, first in Board Rooms - are lauded as parallels to similar 'firsts' amongst members of genuine minority groups, for example as defined by ethnicity.

Celebration of these achievements is great, but I wonder whether the fact we are a majority should change how we think about them. Rhetorically speaking, the injustice is certainly greater if we remember we are not just half, but more than half of the human race. And rhetoric always helps. But is there more?  For instance, can being one of a majority be a disadvantage?





Refs:
A Century of Change - Trends in UK Statistics since 1900
Hansard - Women's Enfranchisement Bill 1911
Office of National Statistics.

The woman who saved the children

How had I not heard of Eglantyne Jebb? 105 years older than me, in 1911 she was touring the Tyrol with her sick mother, writing passionate letters to a former colleague and wondering about her social purpose. Two years later, affair over, she set off for the Balkans (a war zone) to oversee the distribution of aid, including investigating the truth of a massacre. The information she uncovered was so sensitive she sewed it into her clothing for safety.

It's what Eglantyne did six years later that makes me think I should know her: just after the First World War she founded Save the Children. With her team - including one of her equally interesting sisters - she organised relief for children all over Europe, including those in 'enemy' countries. What she did there has left a legacy, not only in lives saved and an organisation of international standing, but in the whole way we think about children at war.

I've just finished her biography - The Woman Who Saved the Children, by Clare Mulley. Amazed by Eglantyne's achievements, I enjoyed following her through her life - finding empathy with her frequent depression and her feelings of purposelessness, and finding hope in the fact that she did, eventually, figure it all out.

I am inspired - but also outraged. How many other eminent, impressive women have I never heard of? The 1920s-30s are a period I studied at GCSE: I know about Lloyd George and Clemenceau but had not once heard of the parallel, influential peace movement, with its often female leaders.

I will go in search of further such women. Meanwhile thank you Clare Mulley - I recommend this book to everyone.

The 100th International Women's Day

Happy International Women's Day everyone!

The 'emancipating process has now reached the limits fixed by the physical constitution of women' said Mary Humphrey Ward in 1908. Many agreed with her. At the time, the women of the United Kingdom didn't have a vote in national elections, would have struggled to find an institution that would award them a degree, could not have been barristers, MPs, or taken up many other roles, could not have divorced their husbands for adultery unless it was coupled with 'cruelty'. They had come a long way: they were better educated than their forebears, some worked, they had some property rights and some could vote in local elections. But any further liberation, felt Mary Humphrey Ward, would cause the country to 'drift towards a momentous revolution, both social and political, before it has realised the dangers involved.'

International Women's Day started in 1911 - at a time when many women in this country felt the only way to achieve equality was through violence - and the authorities were responding with more violence.  Female protesters were being jailed for smashing windows: they protested further by refusing to eat and were force-fed, metal tools holding their mouths open so tubes could be pushed down their throats and liquid food poured into their stomachs.

A hundred-odd years after Mary Humphrey Ward, her words sound ridiculous. Our norms have shifted so that the situation of women back then seems outrageous. But there is a continuity - voices still debate whether women's liberation has any further to go, and whether it needs support.

Today, all I have are questions. Last century, we did well - what is our ambition for the next one? Where would we like the norm to be in a hundred years' time? Can we eradicate gender inequality worldwide? Are any of the differences between men and women so fundamental they do, finally, cause the "emancipating process" to reach its limits?


References
Anti -Suffrage Society - Spartacus
First International Women's Day

March of the Women

A hundred years ago this year was the first performance of March of the Women, in Pall Mall. The work of two suffrage campaigners, Ethyl Smyth (composer) and Cicely Hamilton (writer) it became an anthem for the women's suffrage movement. Here it is revived by a US choir in 2009:

March of the Women

The last verse is best, I think - you wouldn't write it the same way now, but the meaning stands. Faith and daring - laugh a defiance - friend to friend.

Life, strife -- those two are one,

Naught can ye win but by faith and daring.

On, on -- that ye have done

But for the work of today preparing.

Firm in reliance, laugh a defiance,

(Laugh in hope, for sure is the end)

March, march -- many as one,

Shoulder to shoulder and friend to friend.

There is a great story about suffragettes in Holloway Prison in 1912, marching in the courtyard and singing it while being conducted by Ethyl Smyth herself with a toothbrush.

New Year 1911

New Year's Day: time to review the year that's passed. But why stick to this century? I wondered what kind of a year British feminists had had in 1910.

One with its ups and downs, it turns out. In July a bill that proposed giving the vote to large numbers of women was debated at length in Parliament. The report in Hansard (July 12 1910) makes strange reading: men debating whether women need or deserve a vote, whether their lives would be changed, whether the world would change -

"I cannot help thinking that there is some instability in our political system at present. I am quite certain that from time to time there are gusts of passion which sweep over the democracy, and I ask the House whether it would be wise to add to those a new and dangerous force of incalculable moment—I mean the collective emotion of women." (Mr. S. Butcher)

"I am asking for woman suffrage as a man, from a man's point of view, because I think it will be the best and the greatest reform we have ever had. I am asking for it for the sake of the country, for the sake of the men, as well as for the sake of the women." (Mr. Walter M'Laren)

"I do not want to roam into the abstract question of the relations between the sexes, their relative capacities and capabilities. I shall not go into that further than to say that I believe that there is a proportion of women capable of exercising the Parliamentary franchise, not merely for their own satisfaction, but to the public advantage, and I believe that that proportion of women is found in every class throughout the community. I believe the State would be the gainer if they had the vote, and if, in consequence of the vote, they had what I think myself follows from that—access in the fullest sense to all positions in our public life. I feel that the line of sex disqualification is not in accordance with obvious facts. I do not think it is necessary for the security of society. On the other hand, I think the grievance is greatly exaggerated. I think the great mass of women are not in any sensible degree losers by the disability under which they lie. It cannot be proved that they suffer any disadvantage in legislation." (Mr. Churchill)

"A slur of inferiority has been cast upon members of the other sex by hon. Gentlemen who have opposed this Bill. I think there is no inferiority whatever. One cannot but realise that members of the other sex have the gentler qualities much more marked; they transcend men in those qualities. They have also various qualities which fit them for assisting in local government matters. They have qualities which are virtuous in them, but which, in the male sex, would probably not be virtuous at all." (Mr. J.M.H. Kirkwood)

"The experience of Parliament has shown that these changes and reforms which [Stuart Mill] believed could not be accomplished without woman suffrage have, almost all of them, been carried." (Mr. S.H. Butcher)

The Bill was granted a second reading, but then dropped in the run-up to elections, on 18th November. Riots ensued, that day and later, as the Suffragette groups who had held off protests while the Bill was in Parliament resumed their activity and clashed with police. There were over a hundred arrests, and one protester later died of her injuries.

Other movements in feminism had seen continuation of gradual progress: it was the voting question that had been uppermost in the media in 1910.  What would 1911 hold?


(Thanks to the Women's Hour website for its handy timeline)