Pankhurst Turning Point

2 July 1928. The Parliament of the United Kingdom passed The Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act, which finally gave women the right to vote after decades of struggle. Two weeks prior, Emmeline Pankhurst, the leader of the suffragette movement in the UK had died at the age of 69, without being able to see the cause to which she had devoted her entire life achieved. October 2015, the Hollywood’s upcoming movie Suffragette depicting women’s fight for suffrage in the UK, was deluged with criticism due to the fact that their leading actresses were photographed wearing T-shirts with Pankhurst’s quote “I’d rather be a rebel than a slave” as part of the film’s advertising campaign, as if they were “comparing sexism to racism”. This

Its evolution is complex and lasted for over 70 years, however some events that were a turning point are necessarily to be explained in order to understand de latter analysis. It was not until 1835 when the Municipal Corporation Act used the term male, not person, 30 years later, The Kensington Ladies’ Discussion Society was founded, along with the Women’s Suffrage Committee, this was the first organized group to advocate for the women’s right to vote. The years that followed were filled with the founding of several suffragist organizations, such as Emmeline Pankhurst’s Women’s Social and Political Union, massive public demonstrations and gradually more violent and non-pacific ways of activism as hunger strikes, window-smashing or chaining to railings. Those actions were along the same lines as Pankhurst’s famous quote “deeds, not words”. On February 1918, The Representation of the People Bill allowed women over the age of 30 (with some restrictions) to vote. The culmination was achieved with the already mentioned above The Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act, finally granting women the full right to