Emmeline Pankhurst Suffragettes

Suffragettes is the term used to refer to the group women who belonged to the Women’s Social and Political Union (W.S.P.U.) organization between the late 19th century and the early 20th century in the United Kingdom. The objective of this organization, lead by Emmeline Pankhurst, was to achieve the right to vote for women through peaceful meeting in an initial stage, although, eventually, they switched to violent actions. The origins of the organization is product of the separation of regular Unions into male and female Unions; eventually, these female Unions would leave behind some of its members as it can be seen in words of Eulalia Vega “In England, several Unions expelled women from the organization” (My own translation. Vega, 1992;

On the one hand, as it can be seen in My Own Life (1914), Emmeline Pankhurst explains that the society in general felt curious about the reasons why they were using force to make their voice heard. To her, in men’s history there have always been conflicts to achieve what they needed “For every advance of men's political freedom has been marked with violence and the destruction of property” (Pankhurst; 214). On the other hand, Politicians in general were not just against supporting suffragettes but, also, they were using force to contain them. One of the most common arguments against women’s suffrage was that politics was a pure element within society and that the mere participation of women on politics would make it abnormal, as it can be seen in Ideology and Feminism: Why the Suffragettes were “Wild Women” (1982) “opponents argued that by their involvement in politics women would be ‘almost debased or degraded’, their purity and modesty defiled” (Billington, 1982; 4).

Considering all of this, it can be seen that the creation of W.S.P.U. and the emergence of the suffragette movement promoted the idea rebel women, in a society which had fix ideals about women and their role within society. The struggle for women’s suffrage was not easy to pull off and the achievement of the vote took several years. The very first achievement in terms of the vote for women came in at 1918 when women over the age of 30 were allowed to vote, but the fully to vote women came in the year 1928 in the United