Women on the warpath

When Westminster Council granted planning permission for a statue of Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square to mark this year’s centenary of women getting the vote, many people were puzzled. Few had heard of this feminist campaigner, and even fewer knew about the suffragist movement which she led. The suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst seemed a far more appropriate candidate for a statue. Not only was she famous, but some feminist historians claimed that her role in gaining the vote was more important. These two books stand on different sides of the debate. Diane Atkinson has written a collective biography celebrating Mrs Pankhurst and the suffragettes, while Jane Robinson makes the case for Millicent Fawcett and the suffragists.

The two leaders were very different. Fawcett was a plump, bespectacled Edwardian matron and her sister, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, the first female doctor. Millicent was a serious-minded woman who was converted to the feminist cause by John Stuart Mill.