The Feminist Movement: The Women Suffrage Movement

The women suffrage movement emerged in Britain during the early 20th century; this period belongs to what is known as the First wave of feminism. During this period occurred what can be considered as a social conflict between the dominant view, ideals about women, and the role of women within society and the new type of women (rebel women) as opposition to the new vision about women that suffragettes showed and represented.
This new type of women who rebelled against the ideals of women to fight for equality, contrasted with the traditional role of women added to being considered inferior, in this line of thinking about inequality arguments against women suffrage and suffragettes emerged. Those arguments went from defending the existence of physical differences between sexes, to relate the behaviour and motivations of the suffragettes to mental issues; on top of that, the existence of anti-suffrage propaganda distorted, even more, the image of the suffragettes, this propaganda was based on the use of stereotypes to define the suffragettes such as being old, unhappy and unmarried ladies. This attitude towards the suffragettes and the effort of stop them to get support, is related to the idea of existent fear about women being empowered.
These situations that suffragettes had to go through are reflected by Sylvia Pankhurst and Evelyn Sharp in their books: The Suffragette: The History of the …show more content…
Second, that considering the treatment towards women, the negative support and the anti-suffrage campain, the “rebel” label is not just used in the strict frame of the term’s definition, but is product of society’s rejection to a new ideology which collided with the traditional frame of