Assistant Editor, House of Commons 1832\u20131945, History of Parliament<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/a>By 1914, almost half a century after the first mass petition for women\u2019s suffrage was presented to the House of Commons by John Stuart Mill in 1866, the campaign for \u2018Votes for Women\u2019 had yet to achieve its goal. Despite their exclusion from the parliamentary franchise, however, women were able to participate in politics and public life in a variety of different ways during the long nineteenth century. For more than half of the period covered by this resource, the most important figure within the British constitutional system was a woman, but female involvement in politics spanned the social spectrum, from Queen Victoria and members of the aristocratic elite, through middle-class activists, philanthropists, and campaigners, to working-class women who joined trade unions or gave their support to causes such as the women\u2019s suffrage movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/a>There were numerous guises in which women could engage with the political system \u2013 as spectators and observers at election hustings and in Parliament; as petitioners and campaigners; as witnesses to select committees; and as members of a vast array of pressure groups and organisations, including those connected with charities, churches, and political parties. Women with the requisite qualifications could vote for \u2013 and in some cases be elected as members of \u2013 a growing number of local government bodies, such as municipal councils, the boards of guardians which administered the poor law, school boards, and parish and district councils. The causes with which women were involved ranged from the anti-slavery campaign to sanitary and prison reform, and from education to women\u2019s rights with regard to marriage and property. Alongside these practical efforts, women also made a contribution as political theorists, from Mary Wollstonecraft in the 1790s to those who wrote pamphlets or articles for publications such as <\/a>The Englishwoman\u2019s Review<\/em> in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/a>This Routledge Historical Resource contains much primary and secondary material to assist your research into gender and politics. Sarah Richardson\u2019s <\/a>The Political Worlds of Women: Gender and Politics in Nineteenth Century Britain<\/em> provides an excellent overview of the variety and extent of female political participation, for which her video essay on \u2018Gender, citizenship and the franchise\u2019 offers a brief taster. In terms of primary sources, the material available ranges from Mike Sanders\u2019s four-volume collection on <\/a>Women and Radicalism in the Nineteenth Century<\/em> to the rather different political experiences of a Tory MP\u2019s wife and parish councillor described in Peter Gordon\u2019s edition of <\/a>The Journals of Lady Knightley of Fawsley 1885\u20131913<\/em>. Louisa Knightley is among the 400 individuals and 800 organisations with entries in Elizabeth Crawford\u2019s <\/a>The Women\u2019s Suffrage Movement in Britain and Ireland: A Reference Guide, 1866\u20131928. The Lives of Victorian Political Figures Part III<\/em> offers a range of primary sources on Queen Victoria, Florence Nightingale, Annie Besant, and Millicent Garrett Fawcett, while the resource also includes editions of the memoirs of leading women at the court of George III, the letters of Caroline Norton, and the writings of Harriet Martineau.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By 1914, almost half a century after the first mass petition for women\u2019s suffrage was presented to the House of Commons by John Stuart Mill in 1866, the campaign for \u2018Votes for Women\u2019 had yet to achieve its goal. Despite their exclusion from the parliamentary franchise, however, women were able to participate in politics and public life in a variety of different ways during the long nineteenth century. For more than half of the period covered by this resource, the most important figure within the British constitutional system was a woman, but female involvement in politics spanned the social spectrum, from Queen Victoria and members of the aristocratic elite, through middle-class activists, philanthropists, and campaigners, to working-class women who joined trade unions or gave their support to causes such as the women\u2019s suffrage movement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":103,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-106","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t