The Women's Movement, Politics and Citizenship from the Late Nineteenth Century Until 1918

This chapter examines the path of women to the parliamentary franchise, and its relation to the pursuit of citizenship. It indicates some of the ways that women found to enact their aspirations to citizenship, long before the right for some women to vote for parliament was gained in 1918. It is impossible to understand women's entry into the political arena without recognising the many other civil disabilities they had to address along the way. In this sense, establishing women's rights over their own persons was central to the project of achieving full citizenship. For this reason, it is necessary to look backwards to the late nineteenth century, when the first longstanding societies for women's suffrage were established, and when suffragists simultaneously campaigned to regain for women inalienable rights over their own persons.