Suffragetes - Restrictions Facing Women In The 19th And 20th Centuries - IN EXAM

Question 1

Talk about the role of mothers in the 19th century

Answer 1

• expected to stay at home and have children
• tended to have more kids, than upper and middle class wives
• in mid 19th, the average married woman would have 6 kids
• over 35% of married women had 8+ kids
• church was against contraception

Question 2

Talk about the jobs women had in the 19th century

Answer 2

• upper & middle class women weren’t expected to earn there own living
• they rarely had careers, most professions refused entry to women
• nearly impossible for women to become doctors, engineers, architects, accountants and bankers
• after a long struggle women could become doctors
• 1910: women could be accountants & bankers
• 1861: over 72% of teachers were women, it was a low status and badly payed job
• in 1863 male doctors claimed presence of a woman in an operating theatre is an outrage and in 1900 there were only 200 women doctors

Question 3

Talk about the university education women could get

Answer 3

• private girls schools were set up to allow women the same educational opportunities as men
• 1870: Emily Davies & Barbara Bodichon set up the first university college for women
• in the beginning of the 20th century it was difficult for women to obtain a university education
• by 1910 there were just over 1000 women students at Oxford and Cambridge universities

Question 4

Talk about marriage surrounding women

Answer 4

• women were expected to marry and have kids, but there was a shortage of available men
• women outnumbered men for three reasons:
  ~ mortality rate was far higher for boys
  ~ a large number of men served abroad in the armed forces
  ~ men were more likely to emigrate than women
• 1882 marriage property act: when a woman got married her wealth was passed to her husband
• matrimonial causes act of 1857: gave men the right to divorce on the grounds of adultery, but women couldn’t divorce their husbands
• when a divorce happened the kids became the mans property and the mother could be prevented from seeing her children

Question 5

Talk about the suffrage movement

Answer 5

• suffrage means the ‘right to vote in public elections’
• a suffragette was a ‘woman who campaigned militantly for the right to vote
• one organisation which promoted this was the women’s social and political union or WSPU