Idea of progress : to what extend can women's right be considered as a form of progress?

Idea of progress

I'm going to talk about the idea of progress. This notion can be defined as an improvement, a development or a change, scientific or social. It is advances that allow people to have better life condition and to feel happier. Today we are going to talk about the social evolution, in terms of gender parity. So we can ask ourselves: to what extend can women's right be considered as a form of progress? To answer this question we are going firstly to study the hard condition of women in the beginning of the 20th century, and then we will talk about the social progress link to the Suffragette action.

First, before the end of the 19th century, women were “dominated” by men, and it was normal for everyone. They were generally considered as intellectually subordinates, as if they weren’t able to think by themselves. Although the age of compulsory school attendance had been raised to 14 in 1899, many working-class girls left a year earlier, on possession of a labour certificate to enter poorly-paid jobs, especially in domestic service. Many women were employed in 'sweated industries' like shirt making or shoe stitching. Working women were paid less than men even if they did the same jobs.This women might earn 13 shillings a week but even that was not enough for a fully independent existence. So marriage became a practical necessity for working-class women. Moreover, most of her were ignorant about birth control and had to manage a household of six children.

Now let’s talk about the Suffragette action. Women wanted equality. So in 1903, Emmeline Pankurst and her daughters created the Women's Social and Political Union also named Suffragette, to defend women rights’. At the beginning, this movement was pacific, but it became violent from 1910 because of the British government which refused to support women suffrage. They organized riots at demonstrations with window's smashing, but they were arrested for public disorder and put in jail for several days. However, during the First World War, men were sent to battlefields so all the women suspended their activities and took their places in factories for example. That’s why at the end of the war, in 1918 an act of parliament eventually implemented the right to vote for women, but it was under some conditions. So women kept fighting again, and their fight bore their fruits in 1928.

This struggle was illustrated by the UK trailer of “Suffragette” a movie of Sarah Gavron. This drama tracks the story of the women of the early feminist movement. Those resisters were forced to pursue a dangerous game of cat and mouse with a government more and more violent. These women were not necessary educated; they were willing to lose everything in their fight for equality: their jobs, their homes, their children, all their lives. This movie tells the story of an ordinary woman who join the suffragette movement.

To conclude, I would like to say that now women are still not equal in all aspects of British life but we have travelled a long way from the wretched conditions experienced by so many of our foremothers more than 100 years ago. However, there are also inequalities for men, like the fact of that there are more women than men who get the right of custody in case of divorce.

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