The interwar period and conclusions - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

The interwar period and conclusionsSlide2

Overview

Suffrage

Women and Legislation

Women and Voting

Work

Sexuality

ConclusionSlide3

Suffrage

NUWSS

founded in 1897 numbered about

50,000 followed

a policy of civil

disobedience

WSPU

which started in 1903, with about 5,000

members used militant tactics

G

overnment

response included forcible feeding and the so-called Cat & Mouse Act

But women

remained

unenfranchised

at the start of the

war

The

Speakers Conference

added

the grant of the vote for women to its recommendations.

Women

over thirty who were on local government registers or wives of registered men and/or graduates of British universities were enfranchised by the 1918 Representation of the People Act. Slide4
Slide5

Interpretations

The

‘gift’ thesis – that women received the vote in return for their war effort has been discredited by historians.

Only

women over 30 were given the vote thus excluding the vast majority of women who worked during the war.

Martin

Pugh

wrote

that the vote was won for women by men

rather

than as a reward for war work or by the campaigning of the

suffragettes

Recent

feminist historians have demonstrated that the NUWSS kept up the pressure during the war and it is likely the government wanted to escape renewed suffrage aggression

Sandra

Stanley Holton: ‘

an appreciation of the suffrage campaign as a site for gender contestation’Slide6

Legislation

The enfranchisement of women had an immediate political effect.

Millicent

Garrett

Fawcett noted in

The

Women's Victory and

After:

‘

only two really important Acts bearing especially upon the welfare and status of women had been

passed.. from

1907 to

1914

’

But

in

the year following the Reform Act of 1918 ‘

at least seven important measures effecting large improvements in the status of women have rapidly gone through all the stages in both Houses of Parliament

’.

These

included the

Sex Disqualification Removal Act, 1919

,

which enabled

women to enter certain

professions; the

doubling, in 1918, of the sum fathers could be obliged to pay toward the maintenance of an illegitimate child, from five to ten shillings a

week;

the

Midwives Amending Act

and the

Nurses Registration Act,

1919

; the

Maternity and Child Welfare Act, 1918

, which improved health and welfare facilities for mothers and children

and

the

Industrial Courts Act, 1919

, which appointed women to these newly established courts of arbitration on pay and working conditions.

Fawcett wrote:

We

did not, except as a symbol of free citizenship, value [the vote] as a thing good in itself . . . but for the sake of equal laws, the enlarged opportunities, the improved status of women which we knew it involved. We worked for it . . . because . . . it would benefit not women only, but the whole community . . . it was the cause of men, women and children. Slide7
Slide8

Equality?

At least twenty-three pieces of legislation were passed between 1918 and 1930 for which women's groups lobbied because they believed that they would promote gender equality. These included changes in marriage and family law in the direction of equalization of the right to sue for divorce, equalization of guardianship rights over children and greater equalization of property

rights. There

were new welfare measures, such as the first state pensions for widowed mothers and orphans, introduced in 1925

,.

In 1929 the permissible age of marriage for both sexes was raised to sixteen.

Millicent Garret Fawcett resigned her leadership of the reformed NUWSS now called the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship because of its change of focus away from the franchise (which was still unequal) to a broader agenda. She was replaced by Eleanor Rathbone.

Rathbone

did not promote gender equality

but

an equal valuation of different gender roles.

Her

major campaign was for sizable family allowances

Her campaigns

lost popularity and the women’s movement fragmented in the interwar period. The 478 original branches were reduced to 90 by 1929 and 48 by 1935.

Historians more recently have been celebrating the diversity of the interwar feminist groups rather than emphasising ‘failure

’Slide9

The vote

The 1918 General Election was contested by

1623

candidates of whom

17

were women. Few suffrage

camapigners

stood for election.

Christabel

Pankhurst was the most successful, failing to win a seat as a Conservative by a mere 775 votes.

Only

one woman was elected, Sinn Fein’s Constance

Markiewicz

.

She refused

to take her seat in protest at British imperialism.

Viscountess

Astor was the first woman to take up her parliamentary seat winning Plymouth at a by-election in 1919 caused by her husbands accession to the peerage. The first three women in the Commons all replaced their husbands.

15

Conservative seats were won by women from 1918-39;

4

Liberal

;

16

Labour;

1

independent

(Eleanor Rathbone) and

1

Sinn

Fein.

The

presence of women did not change the party political balance.

The

bills they introduced were largely on social policy including the bastardy laws, adoption, nursing home regulations, the Poor Law, expectant mothers and the death sentence, hire purchase and alcohol licensing.

4

women

had been appointed to cabinet positions by 1939: Margaret

Bondfield

(Labour – as Minister for Labour); the duchess of

Atholl

(Conservative, Education); Susan Lawrence (Labour, Health) and Florence

Horsburgh

(Conservative, Health)Slide10

Women MPs:

Constance

Markiewicz

and Nancy Astor

Women Ministers:

Margaret

Bondfield

and Florence

HorsburghSlide11

Party affiliations

Women voters also made an impact on local

government. In

1937 sixteen per cent of London borough councillors were female and women made up five per cent of the membership of other councils, with considerable local disparity.

Political

scientists,

have generally argued that

women voters

are predominantly

both conservative and Conservative.

Contemporary

commentators in the inter-war years did not

make this assumption.

Lord

Rothermere

(owner of the

Daily Mail

) was convinced that

the new young women voters enfranchised in 1928 would vote socialist. The Labour party did increase its poll in the election of

1929 (the number of voters increased by six million over the previous election; Labour increased its vote by three million, the Conservatives by only 600,000; the percentage turnout was unchanged)The press also tended to treat ‘women voters’ as a single bloc whilst male voters were differentiated by class, occupation.Commentators

expressed unease and uncertainty about women's voting preferences and perceived women as politically powerful despite their small numbers in parliament Slide12

Work

There has

been

a more positive analysis of women’s economic status in the interwar period – particularly that of young working-class girls

due

to young women’s increasing economic importance as household

breadwinners

Young women

constituted

over

45 per cent

of the female workforce.

Continuity

can be traced between their employment in the late nineteenth century and in the early 1930s.

Personal

service (of which domestic service constituted 70 per cent) was the largest occupation of this group, accounting for

22 per cent

of young women workers in 1921.

Textiles employed

20 per cent of this group in 1921, and enabled young women in certain communities to

earn higher wagesBy 1931 10 per cent of young women workers were shop assistants, and 12.5 per cent were clerks. Both occupations paid higher wages than domestic service, and clerks could benefit from relatively low working hours. Employment patterns differed by locality.

In Northumberland, a reliance on mining meant that just 43 per cent of girls were in the labour force in 1931, compared with 78 per cent of boys.

In Blackburn

79

per cent of both girls and boys

were in the labour force in 1931. Slide13

Leisure

Changing

employment patterns and working hours facilitated the growth of leisure time.

Leisure

was viewed as a reward for paid

work. Hours were reduced after WWI and there was an extension

of paid holidays

culminating

in the 1938 Holidays with Pay Act.

Commercial

leisure

was

aimed at sixteen- to

twenty-four-year-olds:

Dance halls

targeted

youthful

consumers; by

1937 up to 90 per cent of young men and women went to the cinema at least once a

week; mass production of clothing and cosmetics enabled young women to engage with fashion; chain stores like

Woolworths sold cheap cosmetics, jewellery, and sweets; magazines for young working-class women also flourishedSlide14

Sexuality

The

Eugenics Society was founded in 1907 and its view was that women as guardians of the future of the British ‘race’ should be both chaste and fruitful some arguing that the employment of married women led to a decline in virility and high infant mortality

rates

The

Mental Deficiency Act of 1913

gave

local authorities powers over pregnant women who were homeless, destitute or ‘immoral

’

There

was an attempt in 1921 to criminalise

lesbianism.

The Obscene Publications legislation was used to repress

Radclyffe

Hall’s

The Well of Loneliness

written in

1928

the

Matrimonial Causes Act of 1923 made adultery the sole grounds of divorce for either spouse. Further grounds were added in 1937 including a wife’s right to divorce her husband for rape. 

Marie Stopes founded a birth control clinic but contraception was controversial and its availability largely confined to middle and upper class women. Abortion remained illegal although in 1929 legislation was passed making it legal to abort if the mother’s life was in danger. The Abortion Law Reform Association was formed in 1936 and a government committee was created to review the legislation in 1938Slide15
Slide16

A new dawn?

Benefits

Need for further progress

Progress in public health

Women remained clustered in traditionally female occupations

Decline in family sizes and higher standards of living

Women’s pay levels remained far lower than men

Greater access to education at primary, secondary and tertiary level

Elite women remained largely excluded from work and public sphere

New opportunities in employment

Vote limited to women over 30 (28 after 1928)

Legislative achievements such as the Married Women’s Property Act, Divorce Act

etc

‘High’ politics still the preserve of men

The vote

Return to traditional campaigning issues (

eg

emphasis on welfare and maternity rather than increased employment or civil rights)