Emmeline Pankhurst

3 Pages 807 Words

Emmeline Pankhurst was the voice for women fighting for women’s suffrage in the 1900’s. Not only did she fight for the right for women to vote but for women’s equality in general. Growing up in a male dominated society, Emmeline Pankhurst thought and considered her surroundings and immediately recognized flaws in the society that she was living in. It was quiet clear at that time that most men considered themselves superior to women, but most women at that time accepted and did not argue with that view. In the 1900’s, women were viewed as irrational, less intelligent compared to men, and incapable in making reasonable decisions . Therefore, with the aide of her daughters Sylvia and Christable, she established the Women’s Social and Political Union in 1903. During the Women’s suffrage Movement in Britain, the Pankhurst women repeatedly went to prison for the militant stratagies used from the “suffragettes”. At the age 54 in 1912, Emmeline Pankhurst went to jail 12 times in the same year. Suffragist were also battered in demonstrations, on hunger strikes, and brutally force-fed in prison . In 1905, the W.S.P.U. started to use more militant tactics in their demonstrations. Emmeline Pankhurst’s task was to show the British government that women’s demands couldn’t be overlooked. She proceeded by trying to spoil businesses, damage valuable property, and to demoralize the world of society by making English law a failure. Her reasons for using militant tactics was because violence and rioting receives more attention because it is threatening and feared as she implied in her speech to the United States in 1913. In her speech she explained that “We are driven to this. We are determined to go on with this agitation. It is our duty to make this world a better place for women.” She also reasoned that women did not get their was because they were constitutional and law-abiding . Her thought was that people valued property s...