Feminism in the United Kingdom

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Feminism in United Kingdom
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In the United Kingdom, as in other countries, feminism seeks to establish political, social, and economic equality for women. The history of feminism in Britain dates to the very beginnings of feminism itself, as many of the earliest feminist writers and activists—such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Barbara Bodichon, and Lydia Becker—were British.

19th century

Ann Thornton Going Aloft, c. 1835

The first organised movement for British women's suffrage was the

Langham Place Circle of the 1850s, led by Barbara Bodichon (née Leigh-Smith) and Bessie Rayner Parkes
. They also campaigned for improved female rights in the law, employment, education, and marriage.

Property owning women and widows had been allowed to vote in some local elections, but that ended in 1835. The

Chartist Movement of 1838 to 1857 was a large-scale demand for suffrage—however it only gave suffrage to men over 21. In 1851 the Sheffield Female Political Association was founded and submitted an unsuccessful petition calling for women's suffrage to the House of Lords. This probably inspired British feminist Harriet Taylor Mill to write the pro-women's-suffrage The Enfranchisement of Women (1851).[1][2][3] On 7 June 1866 a petition from 1,499 women calling for women's suffrage was presented to the Parliament, but it also did not succeed.[4]

Upper-class women could exert a little backstage political influence in high society. However, in divorce cases, rich women lost control of their children.

Careers

Ambitious middle-class women faced enormous challenges when they proposed entering suitable careers, such as nursing, teaching, law, and medicine, and the loftier their ambition, the greater the challenge. Physicians barred admission to the medical profession; there were a few opportunities for women lawyers, but none as clerics.

Cambridge minimized the role of women, allowing small all-female colleges to operate. However the new redbrick universities and the other major cities were open to women.[10]

Medicine was the greatest challenge, with the most systematic resistance by the physicians, and the fewest women breaking through. One route to entry was to go to the United States where there were suitable schools for women as early as 1850. Britain was one of the last countries to train women physicians, so 80 to 90% of the British women departed to America for their medical degrees.

Edinburgh University admitted a few women in 1869, then reversed itself in 1873, leaving a strong negative reaction among British medical educators. The first separate school for women physicians opened in London in 1874 to a handful of students. Scotland was more open. Coeducation had to wait until the World War.[11]

By the end of the nineteenth century, women had secured equality of status in most spheres – except for the vote and the holding of office.[citation needed]

Child custody

Before 1839 after the divorce rich women lost control of their children as those children would continue in the family unit with the father, as head of the household, and who continued to be responsible for them. Caroline Norton was one such woman; her personal tragedy where she was denied access to her three sons after a divorce led her to a life of intense campaigning which successfully led to the passing of the Custody of Infants Act 1839 and introduced the Tender years doctrine for child custody arrangement.[12][13][14][15] The Act gave women, for the first time, a right to their children and gave some discretion to the judge in child custody cases. Under the doctrine, the Act also established a presumption of maternal custody for children under the age of seven, maintaining the responsibility for financial support to the father.[12] In 1873 due to additional pressure from women, the Parliament extended the presumption of maternal custody until a child reached sixteen.[16][17] The doctrine spread in many states of the world because of the British Empire.[14]

Divorce

Traditionally, poor people used desertion, and (for poor men) even the practice of selling wives in the market, as a substitute for divorce.[18] In Britain before 1857 wives were under the economic and legal control of their husbands, and divorce was almost impossible. It required a very expensive private act of Parliament costing perhaps £200, of the sort only the richest could possibly afford. It was very difficult to secure divorce on the grounds of adultery, desertion, or cruelty. The first key legislative victory came with the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857. It passed over the strenuous opposition of the highly traditional Church of England. The new law made divorce a civil affair of the courts, rather than a Church matter, with a new civil court in London handling all cases. The process was still quite expensive, at about £40, but now became feasible for the middle class. A woman who obtained a judicial separation took the status of a feme sole, with full control of her own civil rights. Additional amendments came in 1878, which allowed for separations handled by local justices of the peace. The Church of England blocked further reforms until the final breakthrough came with the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973.[19][20]

Prostitution

Bullough argues that prostitution in 18th-century Britain was a convenience to men of all social statuses, and economic necessity for many poor women, and was tolerated by society. The evangelical movement of the nineteenth century denounced the prostitutes and their clients as sinners, and denounced society for tolerating it.[21] Prostitution, according to the values of the Victorian middle-class, was a horrible evil, for the young women, for the men, and for all of society. Parliament in the 1860s in the Contagious Diseases Acts ("CD") adopted the French system of licensed prostitution. The "regulationist policy" was to isolate, segregate, and control prostitution. The main goal was to protect working men, soldiers and sailors near ports and army bases from catching venereal disease. Young women officially became prostitutes and were trapped for life in the system. After a nationwide crusade led by Josephine Butler and the Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts, Parliament repealed the acts in 1886 and ended legalised prostitution. The age of consent for young women was raised from 12 to 16, undercutting the supply of young prostitutes who were in highest demand. The new moral code meant that respectable men dared not be caught.[22][23][24][25]

Protection for rich and poor women

A series of four laws each called the Married Women's Property Act passed Parliament from 1870 to 1893 effectively removed the restrictions that kept wealthy married women from controlling their own property. They now had practically equal status with their husbands, and a status superior to women anywhere else in Europe.[26][27][28] Working class women were protected by a series of laws passed on the assumption that they (like children) did not have full bargaining power and needed protection by the government.[29] The Act did receive a great deal of criticism as many believed that "household harmony could only be achieved by the total subordination of women to their husband".[30]

1900–1950

The early 20th century, the Edwardian era, saw a loosening of Victorian rigidity and complacency: women had more employment opportunities and were more active. Many served worldwide in the British Empire or in Protestant missionary societies.

The

Millicent Garrett Fawcett
.

In 1906, the

East London Federation of Suffragettes
(ELFS), but over the years evolved politically and changed its name accordingly, first to the Women's Suffrage Federation and then to the Workers' Socialist Federation.

Cover of WSPU's The Suffragette, 25 April 1913 (after Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People, 1830)

The radical protests slowly became more violent, and included heckling, banging on doors, smashing shop windows, and arson.

went on hunger-strike, the Liberal government was left with an embarrassing situation. From these political actions, the suffragists successfully created publicity around their institutional discrimination and sexism. Historians generally argue that the first stage of the militant suffragette movement under the Pankhursts in 1906 had a dramatic mobilizing effect on the suffrage movement. Women were thrilled and supportive of revolting in the streets; the membership of the militant WSPU and the older NUWSS overlapped and was mutually supportive. However a system of publicity, Ensor argues, had to continue to escalate to maintain its high visibility in the media. The hunger strikes and force-feeding did that. However the Pankhursts refused any advice and escalated their tactics. They turned to systematic disruption of Liberal Party meetings as well as physical violence in terms of damaging public buildings and arson. This went too far, as the overwhelming majority of suffragists pulled back and refused to follow because they could no longer defend the tactics. They increasingly repudiated the suffragettes as an obstacle to achieving suffrage, saying the militant suffragettes were now aiding the antis, and many historians agree[citation needed]. Searle says the methods of the suffragettes did succeed in damaging the Liberal party but failed to advance the cause of woman suffrage. When the Pankhursts decided to stop the militancy at the start of the war, and enthusiastically support the war effort, the movement split and their leadership role ended. Suffrage did come four years later, but the feminist movement in Britain permanently abandoned the militant tactics that had made the suffragettes famous.[34][35]

The First World War advanced the feminist cause, as women's sacrifices and paid employment were much appreciated. Prime Minister David Lloyd George was clear about how important the women were:

It would have been utterly impossible for us to have waged a successful war had it not been for the skill and ardour, enthusiasm and industry which the women of this country have thrown into the war.[36]

The militant suffragette movement was suspended during the war and never resumed. British society credited the new patriotic roles women played as earning them the vote in 1918.

suffragettes had been weakened, Pugh argues, by repeated failures before 1914 and by the disorganising effects of war mobilization; therefore they quietly accepted these restrictions, which were approved in 1918 by a majority of the War Ministry and each political party in Parliament.[38] More generally, Searle (2004) argues that the British debate was essentially over by the 1890s, and that granting the suffrage in 1918 was mostly a byproduct of giving the vote to male soldiers. Women in Britain finally achieved suffrage on the same terms as men in 1928.[39]

The

long title, "... to amend the Law with respect to disqualification on account of sex", which it achieved in four short sections and one schedule. Its broad aim was achieved by section 1, which stated that:

A person shall not be disqualified by sex or marriage from the exercise of any public function, or from being appointed to or holding any civil or judicial office or post, or from entering or assuming or carrying on any civil profession or vocation, or for admission to any incorporated society (whether incorporated by Royal Charter or otherwise), [and a person shall not be exempted by sex or marriage from the liability to serve as a juror]…[41]

The Crown was given the power to regulate the admission of women to the civil service by Orders in Council, and judges were permitted to control the gender composition of juries. By section 2, women were to be admitted as solicitors after serving three years only if they possessed a University degree which would have qualified them if male, or if they had fulfilled all the requirements of a degree at a University which did not, at the time, admit women to degrees. By section 3, no statute or charter of a University was to preclude University authorities from regulating the admission of women to membership or degrees. By section 4, any orders in council, royal charters, or statutory provisions which were inconsistent with this Act were to cease to have effect.[40]

At the same time there was a relaxing of clothing restrictions on women; however, by 1920 there was negative talk about young women called "

flappers" flaunting their sexuality.[42]

The BBC had a marriage bar between 1932 and 1944, although it was a partial ban and was not fully enforced due to the BBC's ambivalent views on the policy.[43]

The

Home Civil Service; until then women were required to resign when they married.[44]

Lloyds Bank had a marriage bar that also meant that female employees were classified as supplementary staff, rather than permanent. The bank abolished its marriage bar in 1949.[45]

Electoral reform

The United Kingdom's

National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship (NUSEC), which had little support in the Conservative party. However, their persistence with Conservative Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin was rewarded with the passage of the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928.[48]

Social reform

The political change did not immediately change social circumstances. With the economic recession, women were the most vulnerable sector of the workforce. Some women who held jobs prior to the war were obliged to forfeit them to returning soldiers, and others were excessed. With limited franchise, the UK

In 1921,

Margaret Mackworth (Lady Rhondda) founded the Six Point Group,[54] which included Rebecca West. As a political lobby group it aimed at political, occupational, moral, social, economic and legal equality. Thus it was ideologically allied with the Open Door Council, rather than National Council. It also lobbied at an international level, such as the League of Nations, and continued its work till 1983. In retrospect both ideological groups were influential in advancing women's rights in their own way. Despite women being admitted to the House of Commons from 1918, Mackworth, a Viscountess in her own right, spent a lifetime fighting to take her seat in the House of Lords against bitter opposition, a battle which only achieved its goal in the year of her death (1958). This revealed the weaknesses of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act. Mackworth also founded Time and Tide which became the group's journal, and to which West, Virginia Woolf, Rose Macaulay and many others contributed. A number of other women's periodicals also appeared in the 1920s, including Woman and Home, and Good Housekeeping, but whose content reflect very different aspirations. In 1925 Rebecca West wrote in Time and Tide something that reflected not only the movement's need to redefine itself post suffrage, but a continual need for re-examination of goals. "When those of our army whose voices are inclined to coolly tell us that the day of sex-antagonism is over and henceforth we have only to advance hand in hand with the male, I do not believe it."[55]

Reproductive rights

In 1803 the United Kingdom enacted

Lord Ellenborough's Act, making abortion after quickening a capital crime, and providing lesser penalties for the felony of abortion before quickening.[56][57]

Obscene Publications Act 1857.[59][60] Knowlton had previously been convicted in the United States. She and her colleague Charles Bradlaugh were convicted but acquitted on appeal, the subsequent publicity resulting in a decline in the birth rate.[61][62] Not discouraged in the slightest, Besant followed this with The Law of Population.[63]

In 1929 the Infant Life (Preservation) Act 1929 was enacted; it created the offence of child destruction. It also amended the law so that an abortion carried out in good faith, for the sole purpose of preserving the life of the mother, would not be an offence.

In 1938 Dr. Aleck Bourne aborted the pregnancy of a young girl who had been raped by soldiers. Bourne was acquitted after turning himself in to authorities.

1950s – 21st century

1950s Britain is regarded as a bleak period for feminism. In the aftermath of World War II, a new emphasis was placed on companionate marriage and the nuclear family as a foundation of the new welfare state.[64][65]

In 1951, the proportion of adult women who were (or had been) married was 75%; more specifically, 84.8% of women between the ages of 45 and 49 were married.[66] At that time: “marriage was more popular than ever before.”[67] In 1953, a popular book of advice for women states: “A happy marriage may be seen, not as a holy state or something to which a few may luckily attain, but rather as the best course, the simplest, and the easiest way of life for us all”.[68]

While at the end of the war, childcare facilities were closed and assistance for working women became limited, the social reforms implemented by the new welfare state included family allowances meant to subsidize families, that is, to support women in the “capacity as wife and mother.”[65] Sue Bruley argues that “the progressive vision of the New Britain of 1945 was flawed by a fundamentally conservative view of women”.[67]

Women's commitment to companionate marriage was encouraged by the popular media: films, radio and popular

women's magazines
. In the 1950s, women's magazines had considerable influence on forming opinion in all walks of life, including the attitude to women's employment.

Nevertheless, 1950s Britain saw several strides towards the parity of women, such as

equal pay required by law for women teachers (1952) and for women in the civil service (1954), thanks to activists like Edith Summerskill, who fought for women's causes both in parliament and in the traditional non-party pressure groups throughout the 1950s.[69] Barbara Caine argues: “Ironically here, as with the vote, success was sometimes the worst enemy of organised feminism, as the achievement of each goal brought to an end the campaign which had been organised around it, leaving nothing in its place.”[70]

The Act allowed for the creation of female peers entitled to sit in the House of Lords. The first such women peers were four— Barbara Wootton and Stella Isaacs, who were sworn in on 21 October 1958, and Katharine Eliot and Irene Curzon, who took office the next day.[71][72]

Feminist writers of that period, such as

Tavistock Clinic, who published extensively throughout the 1950s and by Donald Winnicott who promoted through radio broadcasts and in the press the idea of the home as a private emotional world in which mother and child are bound to each other and in which the mother has control and finds freedom to fulfill herself.[74]

The

birth control pill was introduced in the UK on the National Health Service in 1961 for married women only, and made available for all women with the NHS from 1967.[75]

The Peerage Act 1963 granted suo jure hereditary women peers (other than those in the Peerage of Ireland) the right to sit in the House of Lords.

The Abortion Act 1967 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom legalising abortions by registered practitioners, and regulating the tax-paid provision of such medical practices through the National Health Service. The Act made abortion legal in all of Great Britain (but not Northern Ireland) up to 28 weeks' gestation. In 1990, the law was amended by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act so that abortion was no longer legal after 24 weeks, except in cases where it was necessary to save the life of the woman, there was evidence of extreme fetal abnormality, or there was a grave risk of physical or mental injury to the woman. Furthermore, all abortion remains officially restricted to cases of maternal life, mental health, health, rape, fetal defects, and/or socioeconomic factors.

The

Barbara Castle, the Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity in Harold Wilson's government, the strike ended three weeks after it began, as a result of a deal that immediately increased their rate of pay to 8% below that of men, rising to the full category B rate the following year. A court of inquiry (under the Industrial Courts Act 1919) was also set up to consider their regrading, although this failed to find in their favour.[80] The women were only regraded into Category C following a further six-week strike in 1984 (source BBC documentary broadcast 9 March 2013).[81] The 1968 strike was a trigger cause of the passing of the Equal Pay Act 1970. As well, inspired by the 1968 strike, women trades unionists founded the National Joint Action Campaign Committee for Women's Equal Rights (NJACCWER), which held an equal pay demonstration attended by 1,000 people in Trafalgar Square on 18 May 1969.[82]

The Equal Pay Act 1970 is an Act of the United Kingdom Parliament from 1970 which prohibits any less favourable treatment between women and men in terms of pay and conditions of employment. The Act has now been mostly superseded by Part 5, chapter 3, of the Equality Act 2010.

The

socialist feminist Brixton Black Women's Group was formed in 1973 to raise consciousness and organise around issues specifically affecting Black women.[83] Several of the group's founding members, such as Beverley Bryan, Olive Morris and Liz Obi, had previously been active in the British Black Panthers and BWG was formed partly from frustrations that the Panthers were not taking women's issues seriously.[84]

The Sex Discrimination Act 1975 (c. 65) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which protected people from discrimination on the grounds of sex or marital status. The Act concerned employment, training, education, harassment, the provision of goods and services, and the disposal of premises. The Gender Recognition Act 2004 and The Sex Discrimination Act 1975 (Amendment) Regulations 2008 amended parts of this Act to apply to transsexual people. Other amendments were introduced by the Sex Discrimination Act 1986, the Employment Act 1989, the Equality Act 2006, and other legislation such as rulings by the European Court of Justice. The Act did not apply in Northern Ireland, however The Sex Discrimination Gender Reassignment Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1999 does. The Act was repealed in full by the Equality Act 2010.

The Grunwick dispute at the Grunwick Film Processing Laboratories in London, was an industrial dispute involving trade union recognition that led to a two-year strike between 1976 and 1978. It was led by Mrs Jayaben Desai, and involved mostly female, immigrant, East African Asian strikers. It was the first dispute where the majority of strikers were from an ethnic minority and still received widespread support from the labour movement.[85]

The United Kingdom signed the

Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women in 1981 and ratified it in 1986.[86]

Female genital mutilation was outlawed in the UK by the Prohibition of Female Circumcision Act 1985, which made it an offence to perform FGM on children or adults.[87]

When Margaret Thatcher (who had been the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990) died the then Leader of the Opposition, Ed Miliband paid tribute to her as "the first woman Prime Minister".[88][89] However Thatcher received scant credit from feminists for breaking the ultimate glass ceiling, because she herself avoided feminism, and expressed an intensely masculine style.[90][91]

R v R [1991] UKHL 12[a] is a court judgment delivered in 1991, in which the House of Lords determined that under English criminal law it is possible for a husband to rape his wife.

Education

In a 2015 evaluation from Lord David Willetts stated that in 2013, the percentage of undergraduate students in the UK were 54 percent female and 46 percent male. Whereas in the 1960s only 25 percent of full-time students in the United Kingdom were female. The increase of women going to university and contributing in the educational system can be linked to the women’s suffrage movements that aimed to encourage women to enroll in higher education.[92]

21st century

The Sex Discrimination (Election Candidates) Act 2002 (c.2) is an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom. The purpose of the Act was to exempt the selection of candidates in parliamentary elections from the provisions in the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 and the Sex Discrimination (Northern Ireland) Order 1976 that outlaw sexual discrimination. The purposes of the Act allow political parties to select candidates based on gender in an effort to increase representation of women in British politics.

The Act applies to elections to:

The Act does not apply to selection of candidates for the Mayor of London elections. Only political parties registered under Part 2 of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 are covered by the Act.

The Act was originally scheduled to run until the end of 2015. On 6 March 2008, Minister for Women Harriet Harman announced that the exemption would be extended until 2030 under the Equality Act 2010.[93][94]

The Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 and the Prohibition of Female Genital Mutilation (Scotland) Act 2005 made it an offence to arrange FGM outside the country for British citizens or permanent residents, whether or not it is lawful in the country to which the girl is taken.[95][96][97][98][99][100] The first prosecutions took place in 2015 against a doctor for performing FGM and another man for aiding and abetting; both were found not guilty.[101]

The Equality Act 2006 (c 3) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, a precursor to the Equality Act 2010, which combines all of the equality enactments within Great Britain and provides comparable protections across all equality strands. Those explicitly mentioned by the Equality Act 2006 include gender; disability; age; proposed, commenced or completed gender reassignment; race; religion or belief and sexual orientation. Among other things, it created a public duty to promote equality on the ground of gender (The Equality Act 2006, section 84, inserting section 76A of the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, now found in section 1 of the Equality Act 2010.)

Since 2007,

Minister for Women and Equality
.

The

gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, race, religion or belief, and sexual orientation. In the case of gender, there are special protections for pregnant women. The Act does not guarantee transsexuals' access to gender-specific services where restrictions are "a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim".[105] Under s.217, with limited exceptions the Act does not apply to Northern Ireland
.

In 2013, the first oral history archive of the United Kingdom women's liberation movement (titled Sisterhood and After) was launched by the British Library.[106]

Sisters Uncut was founded in 2014 to take direct action in response to cuts to domestic violence services by the UK government, which has included demonstrating against cuts at 7 October London premiere of the 2015 film Suffragette. Sisters Uncut organises intersectionally and see the struggle against racism and borders as intimately connected to the struggle against violence towards women.

In 2016, a British receptionist was dismissed for not wearing high heels and she then started a petition which attracted sufficient support to be considered by the UK Parliament. Outsourcing firm Portico stated that Nicola Thorp "had signed the appearance guidelines" but after Thorp launched her online petition—"Make it illegal for a company to require women to wear high heels at work"—the firm changed their policy. The new guideline states that all female employees "can wear plain flat shoes or plain court shoes as they prefer."

MPs Caroline Dinenage, Margot James and Tulip Siddiq.[108][109] Two parliamentary committees in January 2017 decided that Portico had broken the law; the company had already changed its terms of employment.[108][110] The petition gained over 130,000 signatures, sufficient for a debate in the British parliament.[111] This took place on 6 March 2017, when MPs decided the UK government should change the law to prevent the demand being made by employers.[112][110] However, this was rejected by the government in April 2017 as they stated that existing legislation was "adequate".[113]

Timeline

A suffragette arrested in the street by two police officers in London in 1914

1700s

1800–1850

  • 1803: The United Kingdom enacted
    Lord Ellenborough's Act, making abortion after quickening a capital crime, and providing lesser penalties for the felony of abortion before quickening.[56][57]
  • 1818: Jeremy Bentham advocated female suffrage in his book A Plan for Parliamentary Reform.
  • 1832:
    Great Reform Act
    – confirmed the exclusion of women from the electorate.
  • 1835: Property owning women and widows had been allowed to vote in some local elections, but that ended in 1835.
  • 1839: The Custody of Infants Act 1839 was enacted, and it gave women, for the first time, a right to their children and gave some discretion to the judge in child custody cases. Under the Tender years doctrine the Act also established a presumption of maternal custody for children under the age of seven years maintaining the responsibility for financial support to the father.[12]
  • 1844: The regulation of working hours in factories was extended to women by an Act of 1844.
  • 1847: The
    Factory Act 1847
    , also known as the Ten Hours Act, was a United Kingdom Act of Parliament which restricted the working hours of women and young persons (13-18) in textile mills to 10 hours per day. The practicalities of running a textile mill were such that the Act should have effectively set the same limit on the working hours of adult male mill-workers, but defective drafting meant that a subsequent Factory Act in 1850 imposing tighter restrictions on the hours within which women and young persons could work was needed to bring this about.

1850–1880

1880–1900

  • 1882: The Married Women's Property Act 1882 (45 & 46 Vict. c.75) was an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom that significantly altered English law regarding the property rights of married women, which besides other matters allowed married women to own and control property in their own right. The Act applied in England (and Wales) and Ireland (after Irish independence in 1922, only Northern Ireland), but did not extend to Scotland.[122]
  • 1883: Conservative Primrose League formed. "The Primrose League was the first political organisation to give women the same status and responsibilities as men" according to Alistair Cooke.[123]
  • 1884: Third Reform Act – Male electorate doubled to 5 million.
  • 1884: The Married Women's Property Act 1884 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that significantly altered English law regarding the property rights granted to married women, allowing them to own and control their own property, whether acquired before or after marriage, and sue and be sued in their own name.
  • 1886: The
    Contagious Disease Acts
    were repealed.
  • 1889: Women's Franchise League established.
  • 1893: The Married Women's Property Act 1893 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that significantly altered English law regarding the property rights granted to married women. It completed the Married Women's Property Act 1882 by granting married women the same property rights equal to unmarried women.
  • 1894: Local Government Act; women who owned property could vote in local elections, become Poor Law Guardians, serve on School Boards
  • 1894: The publication of C.C. Stopes's British Freewomen, staple reading for the suffrage movement for decades.[124]
  • 1897: National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies
    NUWSS formed (led by Millicent Fawcett).[125]

1900–WW1

1918–WW2

  • 1918: The Representation of the People Act of 1918 enfranchised women over the age of 30 who were either a member or married to a member of the Local Government Register. About 8.4 million women gained the vote.
  • November 1918: the Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act 1918 was passed, allowing women over 21 to be elected into Parliament.[133]
  • December 1919: The
    long title, "... to amend the Law with respect to disqualification on account of sex", which it achieved in four short sections and one schedule. Its broad aim was achieved by section 1, which stated that:

    A person shall not be disqualified by sex or marriage from the exercise of any public function, or from being appointed to or holding any civil or judicial office or post, or from entering or assuming or carrying on any civil profession or vocation, or for admission to any incorporated society (whether incorporated by Royal Charter or otherwise), [and a person shall not be exempted by sex or marriage from the liability to serve as a juror]…[41]

    The Crown was given the power to regulate the admission of women to the civil service by Orders in Council, and judges were permitted to control the gender composition of juries. By section 2, women were to be admitted as solicitors after serving three years only if they possessed a University degree which would have qualified them if male, or if they had fulfilled all the requirements of a degree at a University which did not, at the time, admit women to degrees. By section 3, no statute or charter of a University was to preclude University authorities from regulating the admission of women to membership or degrees. By section 4, any orders in council, royal charters, or statutory provisions which were inconsistent with this Act were to cease to have effect.[40]
  • 1920: The Employment of Women, Young Persons, and Children Act 1920.
  • 1928: Women received the vote on the same terms as men (over the age of 21), as a result of the
    Representation of the People Act 1928
    .
  • 1929: The Infant Life (Preservation) Act 1929 was enacted; it is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It created the offence of child destruction. It also amended the law so that an abortion carried out in good faith, for the sole purpose of preserving the life of the mother, would not be an offence.
  • 1931: A 1-week strike of 10,000 non-unionised factory worker women, led by communist activist Jessie Eden, caused an explosion of English women joining trade unions.[134][135][136]
  • 1932–1944: The BBC had a marriage bar between 1932 and 1944, although it was a partial ban and was not fully enforced due to the BBC's ambivalent views on the policy.[43]
  • 1937: The Matrimonial Causes Act 1937 extended the grounds for divorce, which then only included adultery, to include unlawful desertion for two years or more, cruelty, and incurable insanity.[137]
  • 1938: Dr. Aleck Bourne aborted the pregnancy of a young girl who had been raped by soldiers. Bourne was acquitted after turning himself in to authorities.
  • 1944: In the UK, the marriage bar was removed for all teachers in 1944.[138][139][140]
  • 1944: The BBC had a marriage bar between 1932 and 1944, although it was a partial ban and was not fully enforced due to the BBC's ambivalent views on the policy.[43]
  • 1946: The
    Home Civil Service; until then women were required to resign when they married.[44]

1945–1970

  • 1949: Lloyds Bank had a marriage bar that meant that female employees were classified as supplementary staff, rather than permanent. The bank abolished its marriage bar in 1949.[45]
  • 1952: Equal pay for female teachers was required by law.
  • 1954: Equal pay for women in the civil service was required by law.
  • 1958: The Life Peerages Act 1958 allowed for the creation of female peers entitled to sit in the House of Lords. The first such women peers took their seats on 21 October 1958.[141]
  • 1961: The
    birth control pill was introduced in the UK on the National Health Service in 1961 for married women only.[75]
  • 1963: The Peerage Act 1963 granted suo jure hereditary women peers (other than those in the Peerage of Ireland) the right to sit in the House of Lords.
  • 1967: The birth control pill was made available for all women with the National Health Service from 1967.[75]
  • 1967: The Abortion Act 1967 was enacted; it is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom legalising abortions by registered practitioners, and regulating the tax-paid provision of such medical practices through the National Health Service. The Act made abortion legal in all of Great Britain (but not Northern Ireland) up to 28 weeks' gestation. In 1990, the law was amended by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act so that abortion was no longer legal after 24 weeks, except in cases where it was necessary to save the life of the woman, there was evidence of extreme fetal abnormality, or there was a grave risk of physical or mental injury to the woman. Furthermore, all abortion remains officially restricted to cases of maternal life, mental health, health, rape, fetal defects, and/or socioeconomic factors.
  • 1967: In the common law of crime in England and Wales, a common scold was a type of public nuisance—a troublesome and angry woman who broke the public peace by habitually arguing and quarrelling with her neighbours[citation needed]. The offence was punishable by ducking: being placed in a chair and submerged in a river or pond. Although rarely prosecuted it remained on the statute books in England and Wales until 1967.
  • 1968: The
    Barbara Castle, the Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity in Harold Wilson's government, the strike ended three weeks after it began, as a result of a deal that immediately increased their rate of pay to 8% below that of men, rising to the full category B rate the following year. A court of inquiry (under the Industrial Courts Act 1919) was also set up to consider their regrading, although this failed to find in their favour.[80] The women were only regraded into Category C following a further six-week strike in 1984 (source BBC documentary broadcast 9 March 2013).[81] The 1968 strike was a trigger cause of the passing of the Equal Pay Act 1970
    .
  • 1969: Inspired by the Ford sewing machinists strike of 1968, women trades unionists founded the National Joint Action Campaign Committee for Women's Equal Rights (NJACCWER), which held an equal pay demonstration attended by 1,000 people in Trafalgar Square on 18 May 1969.[82]
  • 1970: During Miss World 1970, feminist protesters threw flour bombs during the live event at London's Royal Albert Hall, momentarily alarming the host, Bob Hope.[142][143]
  • 1970: The
    Women's Liberation Movement with an aim to developing a shared political outlook. Ten UK conferences took place between 1970 and 1978, with the first taking place in 1970.[144]
  • 1970: The Equal Pay Act 1970 is an Act of the United Kingdom Parliament from 1970 which prohibits any less favourable treatment between women and men in terms of pay and conditions of employment. The Act has now been mostly superseded by Part 5, chapter 3, of the Equality Act 2010.

1971–2000

2001–2010

The Act applies to elections to:

The Act does not apply to selection of candidates for the Mayor of London elections. Only political parties registered under Part 2 of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 are covered by the Act.

The Act was originally scheduled to run until the end of 2015. On 6 March 2008, Minister for Women Harriet Harman announced that the exemption would be extended until 2030 under the Equality Act 2010.[93][94]

  • 2003–2005: The
    FGM outside the country for British citizens or permanent residents, whether or not it is lawful in the country to which the girl is taken.[95][96][97][98][99][100]
  • 2004: The Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004 (c 28) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It is concerned with criminal justice and concentrates upon legal protection and assistance to victims of crime, particularly domestic violence. It also expands the provision for trials without a jury, brings in new rules for trials for causing the death of a child or vulnerable adult, and permits bailiffs to use force to enter homes.[163]
  • 2005: In England and Wales, the term “spinster” was abolished in favor of "single" for the purpose of marriage registration.[164]
  • 2006: A Reclaim the Night march was organized in
    murders of five prostitutes there, with between 200 and 300 attendees.[165]
  • 2006: The Equality Act 2006 (c 3) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, a precursor to the Equality Act 2010, which combines all of the equality enactments within Great Britain and provides comparable protections across all equality strands. Those explicitly mentioned by the Equality Act 2006 include gender; disability; age; proposed, commenced or completed gender reassignment; race; religion or belief and sexual orientation. Among other things, it created a public duty to promote equality on the ground of gender (The Equality Act 2006, section 84, inserting section 76A of the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, now found in section 1 of the Equality Act 2010.)
  • 2007: The Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Act 2007 (applicable in England and Wales, and in Northern Ireland) was passed, which enables the victims of forced marriage to apply for court orders for their protection.
  • 2010: The
    gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, race, religion or belief, and sexual orientation. In the case of gender, there are special protections for pregnant women. The Act does not guarantee transgender people's access to gender-specific services where restrictions are "a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim".[105] Under s.217, with limited exceptions the Act does not apply to Northern Ireland
    .

2011–2020

  • 2011: The Forced Marriage etc. (Protection and Jurisdiction) (Scotland) Act 2011[166] gives courts the power to issue protection orders.
  • 2012–2014: In April 2012 after being sexually harassed on London public transport English journalist Laura Bates founded the Everyday Sexism Project, a website which documents everyday examples of sexism experienced by contributors from around the world. The site quickly became successful and a book compilation of submissions from the project was published in 2014.
  • 2012–2015: No More Page 3 was a campaign to stop The Sun newspaper from including pictures of topless glamour models on its Page 3; it ended when the topless feature was discontinued.[167] The campaign was started by Lucy-Anne Holmes in August 2012;[168][169] it reached 215,000 signatures by January 2015. The campaign gained widespread support from MPs and organisations but was criticised by Alison Webster, the photographer for Page 3. In January 2015, it was reported that The Sun had ended Page 3, but the feature was revived for one issue published on 22 January. Following that, Page 3 has not been featured in The Sun again.
  • 2013: The
    absolute primogeniture for those born in the line of succession after 28 October 2011, which meant the eldest child regardless of gender would precede her or his siblings. It was brought into force on 26 March 2015,[171] at the same time as the other Commonwealth realms implemented the Perth Agreement in their own laws.[172]
  • 2013: The first oral history archive of the United Kingdom women's liberation movement (titled Sisterhood and After) was launched by the British Library.[106]
  • 2014: Sisters Uncut was founded in 2014 to take direct action in response to cuts to domestic violence services by the UK government, which has included demonstrating against cuts at 7 October London premiere of the 2015 film Suffragette. Sisters Uncut organises intersectionally and see the struggle against racism and borders as intimately connected to the struggle against violence towards women.
  • 2014: The Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 makes forcing someone to marry (including abroad) a criminal offence.[173] The law came into effect in June 2014 in England and Wales and in October 2014 in Scotland.[174][175]
  • 2015: In Northern Ireland, the Human Trafficking and Exploitation (Criminal Justice and Support for Victims) Act (Northern Ireland) 2015[176] criminalises forced marriage (section 16 - Offence of forced marriage).[177]
  • 2015: The Lords Spiritual (Women) Act 2015, an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom, was enacted. It stipulates that whenever a vacancy arose among the Lords Spiritual during the next ten years after the Act came into force, the position had to be filled by a woman, if there was one who was eligible. It did not apply to the five sees of Canterbury, York, London, Durham or Winchester, which are always represented in the House of Lords. The Act was passed shortly after the Bishops and Priests (Consecration and Ordination of Women) Measure 2014 authorised the Church of England to appoint women as bishops.[178]
  • 2016–2017: In 2016, a British receptionist was dismissed for not wearing high heels and she then started a petition which attracted sufficient support to be considered by the UK Parliament. Outsourcing firm Portico stated that Nicola Thorp "had signed the appearance guidelines" but after Thorp launched her online petition—"Make it illegal for a company to require women to wear high heels at work"—the firm changed their policy. The new guideline states that all female employees "can wear plain flat shoes or plain court shoes as they prefer."
    MPs Caroline Dinenage, Margot James and Tulip Siddiq.[108][109] Two parliamentary committees in January 2017 decided that Portico had broken the law; the company had already changed its terms of employment.[108][110] The petition gained over 130,000 signatures, sufficient for a debate in the British parliament.[111] This took place on 6 March 2017, when MPs decided the UK government should change the law to prevent the demand being made by employers.[112][110] However, this was rejected by the government in April 2017 as they stated that existing legislation was "adequate".[113]
  • 2020: Scotland became the first nation to pass a law (the Period Products (Free Provision) (Scotland) Act 2021) making period products, including tampons and pads, free and available to access in public buildings.[179]

2021–2030

  • 2021: Britain abolished the tampon tax, meaning there is now a zero rate of VAT applying to women's sanitary products.[180][181]

See also

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  1. ^ Compare the 18 July 1877 request for help sent to President Rutherford B. Hayes by West Virginia governor Henry M. Mathews following the outbreak of strikes and riots: "Owing to unlawful combinations and domestic violence now existing at Martinsburg and other points along the line of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, it is impossible with any force at my command to execute the laws of the State."[151]: 24–5 
  1. ^ The first R is short for Regina, denoting a criminal case brought in the name of the Crown; the second R is an anonymised reference to the defendant; [1991] UKHL 12 is a case citation.
  2. ^ The first R is short for Regina, denoting a criminal case brought in the name of the Crown; the second R is an anonymised reference to the defendant; [1991] UKHL 12 is a case citation.

Further reading

Also available as: Bullough, Vera L. (1987), "Prostitution and reform in eighteenth-century England", in Maccubbin, Robert P., ed. (1987). Tis nature's fault: unauthorized sexuality during the Enlightenment. Cambridge New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 61–74. .