Campaign for Women
From this year onwards, women have gradually achieved success both politically and socially. However these achievements came by only after a period of women's protests, struggles and sufferings. After the 1870 Education Act, an increasing number of young women began to receive formal education and this at the same time produced an increasing number of ambitious women. Women began to feel that it was unjust to discriminate sex and it was unfair to give all the priviledge to men and allow women themselves to be suppressed only because they are females. Women had the courage to feel this way mainly because they realized that women were not radical creatures as men have said. Through their process of learning and working, women have explored their own identity as an independent individual who possess the capacity to understand and think by themselves. With this in mind, many women believed just as how some supporters of women's suffrage have said, " women are, like men, rational and autonomous individuals, and they are therefore entitled to full and equal political rights." By the 1890s, what was called the "new woman" appeared in the
The development of the economic of the society also brought more opportunities of employment for women and many new jobs such as the expansion of office work at that time became available for them. Likewise, with the increase in the rate of employment, new forms of exploitation was also created. Particularly those women working in the factories such as the textiles industry had their working hours long while their pay was still very low. For instance, right after the Factory Acts of 1901 was passed, the hours of employment permissible for women and girls over 14 years old were still very long. They could be made to work legally for 12 hours a day and on saturday for 8 hours. Furthermore, women in the dressmaking industry could also be made to work for an additional two hours on 30 nights in any 12 months. Hilda Martindale, a factory inspector at that time who discovered the terrible conditions of women and children working in described in her book [From One Generation to Another], "workrooms were often overcrowded, dirty, ill-ventilated, and insufficiently heated. The employment of little errand girls, usually only 14 years of age, soon
Some common words found in the essay are:
Hilda Martindale, Education Act, Property Act, Factory Acts, , women's suffrage, society women, legal rights, conditions women,
Approximate Word count = 770
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
|