The Militant Suffragettes by Antonia Raeburn

The term refers in particular to members of the British Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), a women-only movement founded in 1903 by Emmeline Pankhurst, which engaged in direct action and civil disobedience.In 1906 the Daily Mail coined the term suffragette for the WSPU, from suffragist, a general term for those advocating women's suffrage. Suffragettes were members of women's organisations in the late-19th and early-20th Centuries who, under the banner 'Votes for Women', fought for women's suffrage, the right to vote in elections. “But equal pay is the one thing that is outstanding.” “Many things that needed changing have been changed, the difference is enormous now and women are in work,” said Antonia. “The Suffragettes wanted respect,” she said, highlighting their discipline and spirituality.īy contrast, she said, the Women’s Liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s was “too concerned with sex”.

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“They felt that unless they got the vote they could not address issues like social reform. “Their (the Suffragettes') idea was that men and women should have equality,” she said. “That doesn’t sound like a very loyal thing to say,” she said. It’s a very different world today for young women, and men.”Īntonia Raeburn's books The Militant Suffragettes and The Suffragette View (Image: Penny Cross)Īntonia thinks that feminists even risk losing the respect of men with their stance.

“They are very enthusiastic, but don’t have knowledge or leadership, they seem puzzled, nothing is sure. Today’s women don’t know where they stand.

“Today women have the freedom to do all that, but they want more and more. Work starts on yet another block of student flats.“A hundred years ago women could not have jobs, they had to work in the home, men and women were very apart. “The barriers are down, whether that be to do with dress, class, hierarchy. She said campaigners such as Helen Pankhurst, the women’s rights advocate and great-granddaughter of chief Suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst, with whom she shared a stage at the recent Port Eliot Festival, have an extreme view of the sexes and want too much. Antonia Raeburn, author of The Militant Suffragettes and The Suffragette View (Image: Penny Cross)īut she worries that modern feminists are more concerned with sexual issues and are in danger of separating the sexes rather than uniting them.

The Militant Suffragettes by Antonia Raeburn