Throughout the 19th century and even as far back as the 18th (Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Women was published in 1792), men and women in England, France and, latterly, the US, were agitating for equal rights for women. The vote was not the most pressing topic, as there were a lot of men who didn't have the vote either. Only men of property in England were eligible, and no black American, man or woman, had the vote. What rankled most was the Victorian belief, reflected in the legislation, that a woman's place was in the home. This deprived them of the right to a university education, meaning they could not be lawyers or doctors, and restricted their right to own or inherit property (meaning they couldn't go into business). Before they got the vote, women had made progress in achieving all these things.
The first World War helped to break down preconceptions about women's role in the home: many women were co-opted into the workforce, doing heavy jobs previously considered the exclusive domain of men, like sweeping chimneys and manufacturing shells. Even before the war, women had been entering the workforce in ever-increasing numbers, as blue and white collar employees.
In 1903 Emmeline Pankhurst founded the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) in Manchester, and the era of the suffragettes began. Mrs Pankhurst's two daughters were also involved: Christabel (the more militant) and Sylvia (who was more interested in the needs of working-class women). In October 1905, Christabel and Annie Kenney, a mill girl who belonged to the WSPU, were arrested and charged with trying to cause a disturbance at a political meeting in Manchester. They chose to be imprisoned rather than paying a fine, in order to get public attention.
Suffragettes chained themselves to the railings of 10 Downing Street, heckled at political meetings, stormed Buckingham Palace, smashed shop windows, slashed paintings, and carried out arson and bomb attacks (with the emphasis on injuring property; not people). Emily Davison sacrificed her life in 1913 by throwing herself under King George V's horse at the Derby. Other suffragettes went on hunger strike in prison and were force-fed, an incredibly unpleasant procedure.
The first country to give women the vote was New Zealand in 1893; followed by Finland (1906), Norway (1913), Denmark (1915), and the Netherlands and Russia (1917). In the US, women in all states got the vote in 1920. In the UK, women over 30 got the vote in 1918 (together with all men over 21); by 1928 it was granted to women over 21. French and Italian women had to wait until the end of the second World War. If getting the vote sounds like progress, it is worth remembering that the publication of Marie Stopes's sensible little book, Married Love, in 1918, caused a sensation over its account of intercourse and contraception, and its suggestion that it was the husband's duty to ensure that his wife was feeling in a receptive mood for having sex. And it wasn't until 1969, when Golda Meir became Prime Minister of Israel, that a woman was made head of government simply on her own merits, and not because of family connections.
Simone de Beauvoir's groundbreaking book, The Second Sex (1949), equated women with racial minorities in their treatment by white men as the Other, and suggested "one is not born a woman, one becomes one". In the 1960s and 1970s the unfinished business of women's rights again moved centre stage with the emergence of feminists such as Betty Friedan and Germaine Greer.
As the century closes, middleclass women in Western countries are faring well, while workingclass women are still struggling with issues like equal pay, and many women in developing countries are still illiterate.
