Votes for Women

From c. 1860 to the passing of the Representation of the People Act of 1918, the fight for votes for women was waging across Britain. In this playlist, you’ll find videos featuring experts on the suffrage movement, primary sources from the LSE Women’s Library and a short film made in collaboration with Dorking Museum. We explore the causes of the suffrage movement, its diverse methods and organisations, and the reasons for its successes and failures.

This playlist is particularly useful to complement Part 4 of AQA’s Power and the People module, and the c. 1800-2014 topic of OCR’s Power: Monarchy and Democracy.

Additional Resources

Free online course

The Citizens project at Royal Holloway produced a free online course ‘Beyond the Ballot: Women’s Rights and Suffrage from 1866 to Today’, which you can access on FutureLearn.

This course is intended for anyone with an interest in nineteenth or twentieth century history, the women’s suffrage campaign or the history of women’s rights. It does not require any reading before you start or previous experience of studying the subject.

UK Parliament

The UK Parliament website has details of its Vote 100 activities, including videos of women sharing stories of how laws passed by Parliament have changed their lives. Parliament’s Living Heritage webpages include detailed information about Women and the Vote.

Their website also hosts an Interactive Timeline with a section on women and the tote.

Primary Sources

For primary sources, the Museum of London website has a digitised collection of suffrage objects. The National Archives ‘Suffragettes on File’ webpage has a range of visual and textual sources from their collections. The LSE Women’s Library has an interactive timeline of documents and images on the battle for equality for women. The British Library website has a section on Votes for Women with digitised documents and a series of short blog articles.

Key Stage 3 resources

The website of the People’s History Museum has links to a ‘Deeds not Words’ podcast, and lesson plans on the suffragettes suitable for KS3. For further KS3 lessons plans and learning resources, see the Women’s Suffrage Project. This website, by the Historical Association and the Association for Citizenship Teaching, has history and citizenship resources for KS3, GCSE and A-Level, including a database of suffrage campaigners.

Early women's suffrage movement in the UK

HerArchivist for Spirit of 2012 produced a learning resource pack using archive material about the early women’s movement in the UK. This includes student activities and teacher notes. You can download it here.

Glasgow Women's Library

Glasgow Women’s Library also has a secondary school toolkit you can download on Votes for Women. It features instructions on how to play ‘PANKO, or Votes for Women’, a suffrage-themed game that was invented in 1910.