Detail from a German poster for Women’s Day, March 8, 1914, demanding voting rights for women. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
In 2018 we commemorated property-owning women over the age of 30 getting the vote in the United Kingdom. Two years later we will mark 100 years since all women received the vote in the United States.
These are important parliamentary milestones but the lauding of campaigners has given priority to organised women’s movements in gaining the vote. This edges women’s suffrage off the main stage of world politics and makes it a pressure group issue; interesting enough in its way, but of no great consequence in the halls of power.
This emphasis on campaigners, whether militant or constitutional, takes away from the more profound change wrought when women got the vote.
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