Women's Suffrage Movement Analysis

The Women’s Suffrage Movement in Great Britain was conceived in 1832, when the Great Reform Act was passed which specified that only “male persons” were allowed to vote. The efforts gained momentum in the early 1900s with the founding of Suffrage Societies such as the Women’s Social and Political Union and the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. The movement ended in 1928, when women gained the right to vote through the Representational People Act, which allowed women over the age of twenty-one to vote. The Women’s Suffrage Movement has been the subject of much analysis and consists of a plethora of different viewpoints on the cause of suffrage, women and organizations that played a part in the movement, the timeline, and its political
She examines the settings of the movement, economically, socially, religiously, educationally, and politically. The forces that shaped the women’s suffrage movement, such as social change, advances in educational, religious movements, and opportunities for social reform, are also considered. Bolt then discusses the movements themselves in three parts: the first taking place from 1840 to 1860, second 1870 until 1880, and third from 1890 until 1914. Bolt references several other works regarding the Women’s movement, such as Olive Banks’s Faces of Feminism: A Study of Feminism as a Social Movement, and Sex and Suffrage in Britain 1860-1914 by Susan Kingsley Kent. Bolt concludes that both movements had a similar timeline, and both organized after a period of feminism in writing and a social movement for change. The two groups also felt that advances in education for women would lead to the advances of their cause and progress on issues, such as the improvement of education, on which men agreed and had
Pugh discusses the issues regarding the women’s movement, such as problems regarding the planning of the movement, organization, leadership, strategy, and the debate regarding the movement. He also discusses the movement itself, along with the militancy and non-militancy movements that came from the original movement. Pugh builds upon the ideas of his contemporaries, such as Olive Banks’s Becoming a Feminist: The Social Origins of First Wave Feminism, Sandra Stanley Holton’s Feminism and Democracy: Women’s Suffrage and Reform Politics in Britain,