As surely everyone must by now know, 2018 marks the centenary of women securing the vote in Britain. This monumental event represented a giant leap forward for sexual equality and is truly deserving of commemoration. There will, rightly, be television programmes, books column inches and tea towels marking the anniversary.
Everyone should know about Sylvia Pankhurst, Emily Davison, Millicent Fawcett and their comrades. But there is a danger with every national commemoration that history is rewritten: in the retelling, some facts are conveniently forgotten and others distorted. We forget that 1918 also marks the first year that all men were able to vote and that suffrage was only granted to a proportion of women over the age of 30, those who owned property or were married to a property owner.
The most blatant rewriting of history comes with the comparisons being drawn between the suffragettes and today’s feminists.
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