mothers was their primary duty as citizens, the War did not change this view. 26 The
extension of the electorate to include the first women to vote was categorised by
Millicent Fawcett, the head of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), as a ‘motherhood franchise,’ due to the age qualification clause. 27 As
Susan Grayzel noted, it was not the mobilised women who were then enfranchised,
but their matriarchal elders, their mothers and grandmothers, who were the first to vote. 28 Thus, there is no direct correlation between women who worked for the war
effort and those first enfranchised. The overarching goals of the women’s movement,
equal political rights, cannot be determined as achieved in 1918. Common Cause, NUWSS publication, 8 th February 1918 issue contains a small advert for a celebration event for the passage of the Representation of the People Act, yet also contains a string of future events. 29 The NUWSS did not disband but rebranded as
the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship (NUSEC). As Fawcett’s elected
successor, Eleanor Rathbone had deemed the 1918 enfranchisement ‘victory in a single battle, not the whole war.’ 30 Rathbone utilised the organisational structure to become an ardent lobbyist for women’s issues. 31 Particularly for improved welfare support to families, especially for poor women as they could not earn as they were responsible for caring for children. 32 Thus, the contemporary interpretation was not
one of an accomplished goal, rather a continuous struggle. Suffrage was not a
response to women’s expanding role in society, but the traditional, male perception
of women, that of motherhood.
The mobilisation of women into the war effort did not act as a watershed
moment in fundamentally changing the attitudes of ardent anti- Suffragette’s, they
remained committed in their opposition. The February 1918 issue of the Anti-
26 Susan R. Grayzel, ‘National Service and National Sacrifice: Civic Participation, Gender and National Identity’, in Women’s Identities at War: Gender, Motherhood, and Politics in Britain and France during the First World War (Chapel Hill, N.C: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), pp. 190 – 225 (p. 214). 27 Bader-Zaar, para. 24. 28 Grayzel, ‘National Service and National Sacrifice: Civic Participation, Gender and National Identity’, p. 211. 29 National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, ‘The Common Cause’, LSE Digital Library , 8 February 1918, pp. 557 – 63 <https://digital.library.lse.ac.uk/objects/lse:caq954hoj> [accessed 9 April 2023]. 30 Noakes, ‘Demobilising the Military Woman’, p. 147. 31 ‘Rathbone, Eleanor Florence (1872–1946), Social Reformer’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , para. 17. 32 Ibid, para. 8.
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