British Reform and Women's Rights : A Potted History

“The history of formal concessions since 1870, gradually granting women their legal and political independence, has had remarkably little to do with the history of continuing social and economic dependence for the great majority.”


The crucial question that seems to be posed by such a statement is whether or not the demand for political and legal rights is inextricably linked to social and economic dependence. To claim that the two were entirely separate would perhaps be a mistake, for it would discount the countless occasions of women’s vigorous and popular protest against political, and in recent decades social, grievances. One might argue that without such legal and political rights - such as the right to vote, for example, social and economic ‘dependence’ simply is not possible. That only by being full recognised legally and politically can one hope to secure a positive social and economic existence. However, there is certainly room for counter-argument ; well into the 20th Century women were still being treated unequally in the social and economic spheres, such as in employment, despite numerous political advances. Therefore, we must gauge specifically whether these political and legal gains have manifested themselves into the everyday lives of British women, and thus benefit them socially and economically - or whether, despite their legislative definitions, women continue to be mistreated. Certainly, as late as 1990, even when women had gained every political and legal right in both the public and private spheres, Margaret Thatcher was espousing a return to ‘Victorian Values’, entailing definitive separate roles for men and women. Therefore this “continuing social and economic dependence” is slightly less straight-forward than it claims to be. Yet by the turn of the 21st Century, women are actively playing a part in all sectors, there clearly has been some form of ‘advance’ - only by comparing this with the situation from 1870 may we discern whether it was the political ramifications that ushered in such a change, or whether the change was inevitable.

It would perhaps be fitting to begin with the Victorian feminists, who mostly predate 1870 in the beginnings of their activities. Crucially, the idea that the women’s Victorian movement was concerned primarily, even exclusively, with gaining access for women to the public sphere must also be seen alongside a recognition of the extent of Victorian feminist concern with the oppression of women in domestic life, marriage and sexual relations. The demand was for two-tier change - political and social, and therefore begs the question whether or not we should view these two phenomena separately or together. The Victorian feminists certainly viewed them both as very much integrally linked, and Caine provides us with four such examples showcasing the different aims and aspirations of the Victorian feminist ; Emily Davies, Milicent Fawcett, Josephine Butler and Frances Cobbe. All four would have agreed that women were legally, socially and economically oppressed : all three thus requiring an immediate remedy. But they disagreed about the nature of this oppression and about how it should be reformed. All of them believed that women should have equal political and legal rights, but they differed strongly on the question whether women and men were or could ever be equal intellectually and morally. We can perhaps attribute the emphasis Victorians placed on legal rights on the dominant social roles that exercised great influence in the period. However, such feminists did not ignore the plight of women economically ; in a period where many, especially from the middle and upper classes, were not expected to work. Cobbe and Butler in particular stressed the significance of the immediate need for the emancipation of women, most notably in the workplace. Revealingly, it is the similarities between Caine’s four examples of Victorian feminists that derive from the social context which they all shared. The Victorian world in which they lives was characterised not only by a range of social, religious and political ideas and institutions, but also an intense concern about marriage, child-rearing and the physical and mental capacity of women. This framework gave Victorian feminists a concern about women’s social and moral duties, about their need to preserve a moral order and create social harmony, which is certainly not shared by their 20th Century counterparts. The peaceful methods employed by the first feminists of the Victorian era would come to represent a stark contrasts to the militancy ushered in by the creation of the Women’s Social and Political Union in 1905.

However, even before then, the last decade of the 19th Century especially can be used as an example of great economic and social advance : coexisting with little political or legal advance. In view of women’s expanding employment opportunities, the marked expansion in women’s public role in terms of local government and education, it is hard to see the late 19th Century as one in which no significant developments took place. There were very few political concessions, yet real social advances. Furthermore, from the 1870’s onwards a great proliferation of child-rearing manuals gave detailed advice on such questions as correct and safe methods of infant-feeding, toilet training, health and moral discipline. It is perhaps within this period we see the greatest example of class divide. Working class mothers, surviving on meagre wages or a portion of the husbands pay packet would struggle heinously to cope with bringing up children alone. This would continue well into the 20th Century, legal and political advances could not aid working class women socially or economically. Thus habits of working class mothers were often harmful ; such as feeding babies on skimmed milk and wrapping them in towels. The desirable alternatives such as fresh pasteurised milk and towelling nappies were often financially impractical. Yet given such difficulties, what is surprising about late Victorian and Edwardian working class mothers is not that many failed to keep pace with rising professional norms of maternity, but that many succeeded. Detailed accounts of individual families reveal again and again the struggle of working class mothers to maintain cleanliness, good health and regular meals. However, we must be careful to propose an entirely class-based argument. Parents prosecuted for child abuse and neglect by the NSPCC had a mean income considerably higher than the average working class wage. Such examples suggest that inadequate motherhood was not confined to the working classes - and in spite of the undoubted importance of income, nutrition and environment and in no sense wholly determined by material constraints. Despite these obvious limitations, we can view the period 1870-1914 as a mostly positive one for social and economic advance, and simultaneously negative for legal and political rights. From the 1880’s feminists overtly challenged the ideology of separate spheres for men and women by attacking the institution of marriage and laws that permitted marital abuse against women. The Education Act of 1870, whilst not primarily meant to benefit women, did so by stimulating a great demand for teachers, most of whom were women. This is a good example of political implementation by Whitehall affecting women both socially and economically. These new jobs gave increased economic independence to many women - in 1861, some 80,000 women held teaching positions, this increased to 172,000 by 1901. Between 1861 and 1911, the number of women teachers had grown by 129%. Furthermore, nursing jobs for women expanded by 21% over the same period, shop assistants rising from 87,000 to 366,000. With these jobs, women gained an independent, if meagre and unequal, income and the potential then for independence of action.

The “new woman” of the 1880’s and 1890’s - educated, independent, active - represented a dramatic departure for the model of Victorian femininity from previous decades. However, the picture was not all positive in this period - the concept of “race degeneration” gave rise to the raising of children becoming a national obligation in the post Boer-war period. Concerns about Britons inherent weakness meant that women themselves often went without food, clothing and rest so that the new state requirements for their children could be met. Anna Martin observed the child welfare movement expected the mother to become, “the unpaid nursemaid of the state.” However, the “new woman” novels that appeared in the 1890’s pointedly attacked marriage - the character Sarah Grand focused on the marriage institution to expose its hypocrisy. Thus, the example of marriage shows us that socially women could be very downtrodden. Until the passage of the Married Women’s Property Acts of 1870 and 1882 women became the property of their husbands - akin to a form of slavery. Furthermore, marital rape was rife - in the ruling Regina vs. Clarence in 1888, the judge established the precedent that a husband could not be found guilty of raping his wife. This led to a sharp critique of masculinity - which instilled in feminists a conviction that only a massive transformation in the laws, customs, morals and traditions of British society could produce real equality - thus they turned their attentions to obtaining the vote. From 1905, a provocative mass movement in support of women’s suffrage vigorously challenged the ideology of separate spheres and the understanding of male and female sexuality that underpinned Liberal policy. With the creation of the WSPU around recognisable leaders (Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst) the entire feminist movement centred around suffrage as a means by which women could free themselves. Therefore, obtaining political ‘freedom’ through the franchise was thus linked to a heightened social, and therefore, economic role. The WSPU succeeded in focusing enormous publicity on the suffrage issue, through militant tactics and hunger strikes, but the parliamentary response was not forthcoming. With the example of obtaining the vote, we cannot claim that the history of “formal concessions” has little to do with the increased role socially and economically women would play. The sheer volume of protest in support of women’s suffrage alleviates the issue to a far higher level than that - that, even to some a matter of death (Emily Davison), obtaining the vote was the key to gender equality. In early 1918, in what it defined as a gesture of recognition for women’s contribution to the war effort, parliament granted the vote to women over the age of 30. This measure failed to enfranchise three out of eleven million women. Indeed, those women who had helped most directly with the war effort : the young, working class girls - were primarily excluded. However, it is possible to argue that the First World War had an even more profound effect : Nina Boyle remarked that, “woman’s place is no longer the home. It is the battlefield, the farm, the factory, the shop.” These opportunities for work increased female visibility in public life and released many from slavish domesticity. Yet the age restriction on the Representation of the People Act ensured that women would not enjoy a majority over men : the 1918 Act thus fell far short of what feminists had been demanding for decades, and its overall impact limited.

Yet there is real evidence that in the inter-war years there were significant legal and political concessions to women that had a direct influence upon their socio-economic independence. In 1919, the passage of the Sex Disqualification Removal Act gave women access to all branches of the legal profession. By 1925, the civil service admitted women to its competitive exams. The Matrimonial Causes Act of 1923 eliminated the double standards of divorce. Crucially, in 1928 women finally obtained the franchise on the same terms as it was granted to men. These were all impressive victories by any measure, certainly these legislative reforms, along with the attributable gains women had made in employment and wages during the war, contributed to an impression that the war had been mostly positive for women, that it had enhanced their position in the workplace and in political life. However, illuminating research by Savage has told a somewhat different tale centred around sex segregation in the ‘new’ industries developing in the inter-war period. Although these industries (based on the rapidly growing home consumer market and chemicals) did employ some women to specific areas of production, the stark fact is that the majority of these jobs went to men. One very common explanation of male dominance in paid employment is the role of male labour organisation, especially in trade unions. Hartmann has argued that, “the ability of men to organise themselves played a crucial role in limiting women’s position in the wage-labour market.” In specific cases trade unions were responsible for the protection of male labour, but on the whole they were not strong enough in the areas of Savage’s study (the ‘new’ Southern industries) to have a large impact. Nearly all of the industries studied were poorly unionised, yet still had a predominantly male workforce. Hence, predominantly male employment cannot be due to the existence of strong unions. Adult women were not even overwhelmingly employed in the sectors of food processing and electrical engineering in Slough. Smaller firms in particular employed more men, and the TUC report of 1930-31 stated that Aspro Ltd. “preferred single women”. Therefore, there is little evidence that trade unions were a significant force behind the development of sex segregation in Slough - employers themselves were a far more active force. For instance, W.H Mills in Bristol, Unilever and Boots all operated marriage bars, preventing women from returning to work after marriage, in the inter-war period.

In a period where what labour market controls male workers had developed were under severe pressure from mass unemployment (especially after the Wall Street Crash in 1929), and where new employers were actively seeking a new labour force with no real industrial skills, women’s employment in many forms of manufacturing failed to expand despite a real demand for their labour. Between 1921 and 1931 the proportion of women in manufacturing actually fell from 26-22%. The fact that women could not have informal access to paid labour was directly related to the development of a “housewife-ideology” that occurred during the period. Despite real political and legal gains aforementioned, therefore, women still were in a subordinate position in the inter-war period relative to men. Once again however, women would come to the state’s aid during the Second World War. The National Service Number 2 Act in December 1941 ordered all single women without dependents into service for the state. Furthermore, some 155,000 volunteered for organisations such as the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) and the Women’s Land Army. Such a combination of volunteer recruitment and conscription utterly transformed the composition of the workforce and the nature of the work women did. After the war, the implementation of the Beveridge Report and the subsequent creation of the welfare state dramatically transformed the ideology underpinning British social policy. Certainly, gender divisions did not just disappear, but ordinary men, women and their children now had the means of obtaining the necessities of life without untold hardship. The example of the welfare state showcases how governmental “concessions” aided women, especially socially, in providing for them the better means of providing for their family. Certainly it did not usher in any revolutionary ideas about gender equality - but what it did do, in helping especially working class mothers to raise their children healthily, must be noted. Moreover, the post-war governments pledged themselves to a policy of full employment - clearly helping women remain in their jobs after the Second World War, unlike the First. In 1951, 22% of married women worked outside of the home, compared to just 10% in 1931. Therefore, political decisions taken at the highest level did indeed aid women in their socio-economic independence, especially with the marked shift to the left in British politics after 1945.

However, the level of discontent that simmered over into the “second wave” of feminism clearly indicates that women were not satisfied socially. Further political advances were indeed forthcoming, yet the level of protest suggests that they were certainly not linked. Legal abortion after 1967, the Equal Pay Acts of 1970 and 1975 and the Sex Discrimination Act can all be counted as significant achievements in the realm of legislative advance for women. These legislations made is possible for women to gain equal treatment with men in education, training and wage-earning. But ‘second wave’ feminists looked for more than equality with men before the law ; they sought changes in the law, the social and economic system and the overall culture that would liberate them from negative conceptions of femininity. How far it would be possible to achieve such an aim is entirely questionable - it seemed that much had indeed been achieved by the late 1970’s, only for the Conservative backlash against ‘permissiveness’ to leave the state of women’s affairs in a state of confusion. The Thatcherite agenda, rolling back the powers of the state, laissez-faire capitalism and national pride would all be re-established through a renewal of traditional values of morality, discipline and restraint - family life would thus be strengthened by a return to separate spheres for men and women. Thatcher cited, “serious as the economic challenge is, the political and moral challenge is just as grave, and perhaps more so.” This moral agenda, of a return to “Victorian Values” entailed the recreation in which bourgeois men displayed their talents in the arena of industry and commerce, and bourgeois women presided over the home as guardians of the nation’s morality. Drawing upon notions of gender familiar to 19th Century morals, Thatcherites posited a womanhood whose inherent qualities of purity, innocence and nurturance complemented the aggressive instincts of men. Furthermore, Thatcher’s social policies hampered women who depended upon obtaining state sponsored child care so that they could go to work to support their families. Therefore, it may appear that with the decade of Thatcherism, the wheel has turned full circle for women. However, Thatcher’s attempt to over-turn the Abortion Reform Act of 1967 has proved unsuccessful - a public poll indicating 79% in favour of the Act. Perhaps we may even view such a return to “Victorian Values” as something as an anomaly. Women in the 21st Century enjoy as much freedom as men - by 1988 50% of entrants into law were women, females made up 22% of solicitors and barristers and 21% of GP’s, and the number looks set to be growing with increased female performance at standardised examination level and higher intake into universities.

Therefore, in conclusion, it appears as if the history of formal concessions to women has provided somewhat of a framework to their continuing social and economic independence. It is certainly questionable that without many of the major pieces of legislation that significantly affected the way women lived their lives, such social advance would have been hindered. Indeed, legal and political action seems to have aided both social and economic progress for women on countless occasions. Equal pay legislation, for example, have ensured women their fairer treatment in the labour related arena - and social policies such as the development and sustained involvement of the welfare state in helping maintain a healthy family have simultaneously aided the social well-being of females throughout the nation. Of course there have been examples where legal and political concessions have had limited effect upon the continuing social and economic independence of women, perhaps most notably the limited franchise gained in 1918. However, the case more firmly rests on the other side - it would be foolish to argue that the history of legal and political concessions for women since 1870 has had remarkably little to do with the history of continued social and economic independence for the great majority.

Bibliography :-
S. K Kent, Gender and Power in Britain 1640-1990
J. Harris, Private Lives, Public Spirit
J. Lewis, Women in England 1870-1950
J. Lewis, Women in England since 1945
P. Levine, Victorian Feminism
B. Caine, Victorian Feminists
M. Savage, “Trade unionism, sex segregation and the state : women’s employment in ‘new industries’ in inter-war Britain, Social History 1988
A. O’ Day, T. Gourvish (eds.), Britain Since 1945
J. Lewis, “Family, gender and women’s agency in building the welfare state”, SH 1994