Failure of the feminists

After 100 International Women’s Days, real achievement still trumps leftist ideology

Nothing illustrates better the difference between political idealism and political realism than the campaign to advance women in power, now a century old. The idealists insist on universal principles, based on rights theory, which benefit all women equally. Realists grasp the point that gifted women, in actual office and able to exercise authority, do more to persuade the public of women’s fitness to rule than anything else.

Women’s rights campaigners, suffragettes and feminists have achieved astonishingly little. One reason is that most of them were also radically engaged in advancing left-wing causes across the board as well as the specific demands of women. When faced with the choice of which came first, the left or women, it was usually women who were pushed into second place. It is likely that some women would have got the vote in Britain well before the first world war if feminists had been prepared to accept age and property qualifications as opposed to giving the vote to all women over 21.