“What does women’s suffrage mean?”

BOUZAZOUA Redha

Groupe 19

12h45/14h15

Test English Expression written

“What does women’s suffrage mean?”

Questions :

1. The document we have to study is apparently a tract from a social movement which promote the right for women to vote in the country during the election. This social movement is called the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). We can’t notice in this extract who authored it but it might be Millicent Fawcett, the president of the movement.

The aim of these tract is to make the peoples opinion aware about the importance and the need of having women’s opinions in the political life of the country during these times. In fact, during this war between the activist and their political nemeses, they were many violent actions caused by women to make their voice count in the country (fires, fight with the police officers) but the writer clearly says in the text that these actions don’t gather all the militants : “ Only a small number of women do these violent actions……. Thousands and thousands of quiet law-abding women are asking for the vote.” It appears necessary for the readers to see that the majority is definitely not in a violence way of action.

1. In this tract, women appears as essentials persons and citizen in the country because without them no one would be there to educate children, to keep the house clean while their husbands were working outside : “Many of them are about children, houses, wages, taxes, insurance, old-age pensions, and lots of other things which matter to women just as much as to men.”. Women should be equally considered in the global mind of the society because of their importance in the daily life. Without them and their support during many historical periods, the country wouldn’t be as powerful and developed that it is nowadays. So, it appears logical and necessary to include them in the right to vote because they have many advices to give in the political structure of the country. Women are presented here as powerful and necessary persons in the country.

1. The NUWSS’ association is a special association that depend of the public opinion and will to give women access to the right of vote. This means that they need people’s support to developpe their fights and their actions : “our work depends on Public sympathy”. Indeed, they try to attract people to their political opinions with catchy examples and good thoughts as well as women’s freedom and women’s place in the country currently. Moreover, by showing that violence, and fights with the police officers isn’t their vision of the right to vote they denounce others associations and movements which use these ways of expression, but this wouldn’t happen in their movement, which means that it is important for people to sign this tract for the fight about the right to vote for women.

1. The president of the movement said that “the war quietly revolutionised the position of the women in the society” and for good reason after the first world war, the representation of people act 1918 gave the opportunity for women over 30 years to vote. So far, it is about 8,4 million of women who were allowed to vote. Also, the employment increased after the war for women workers but unfortunately this increasing didn’t quite permit an increasing of women’s pay.

...