How did World War I affect women’s suffrage movement?

- Dristi Khanal

The Women’s Suffrage movement (the struggle for women’s right to vote) was a very debated topic back in
the early 1900s to the start of 2000s but what did World War I (WWI) really do for the movement? In this essay
I will be discussing points such as what the Women's Suffrage movement is, how WWI made an impact on the
movement, what it was like before the impact was made and how women’s lives were affected positively. This
is an important topic and this essay shows just one of the many viewpoints on how women first gained the
right to vote. This is a important topic as it tells you of the struggle our grandparents if not definitely our great-
grandparents would have had to endure in order to get some equality.

As the topic of Women's Suffrage increases, more and more people are looking back curious to know what
the movement was and what it did for women. Many people even now do not know what the Women’s
Suffrage movement is and how it has affected them. Women’s Suffrage was the struggle for women’s right to
vote. The suffrage campaign had many supporters known as “suffragists” and women activists who were
imprisoned, endured torture and abuse. These women went through many hardships and trouble in order to
gain what they should already have. For women then and even now, all they have ever wanted was to be
treated equally as men, which made many women hope that gaining the right to vote would be the first step in
achieving equality. It is true that in many countries literate women or property owners had received limited
suffrage before universal suffrage was granted for men. However that is discrimination against some men, and
very unfair for women to receive only limited suffrage and under specific conditions as well. Incidents like
these show that it was extremely unfair on women and that they should not have been treated that way. In my
opinion, I think that they were treated with very little respect and rights which was very unfair and just because
of the fact that they were women. Society was very sexist at that time and women did not get treated the
same way as men just because they were of a different gender. Whether or not women wanted to vote should
have been their choice and entirely up to them to decide. It was wrong of them to be imprisoned for doing
something that they should have been encouraged for instead.

WWI gave women the opportunity to stand up and take part in the community, this helped to bring more
attention to the movement and gave women a chance at suffrage. While men were out fighting in WWI, women
had shown society that they could take on lead roles and that they were capable of handling men’s work. “The
women's contribution to the war effort challenged the notion of women's physical and mental inferiority and
made it more difficult to maintain that women were, both by constitution and temperament, unfit to vote. If
women could work in munitions factories, it seemed both ungrateful and illogical to deny them a place in the
polling booth. But the vote was much more than simply a reward for war work; the point was that women's
participation in the war helped to dispel the fears that surrounded women's entry into the public arena.” said
Leslie P. Hume, an American Historian. This shows that women’s involvement certainly helped to convince the
politicians to get women full voting rights after the war had ended. After women began to work in munition
factories and receive different jobs, people could not say that were incapable of handling men’s work and that
they there were unfit to vote, when in fact they had proved that they were indeed capable. In short WWI made
quite an impact on the movement and it really helped for women to get suffrage after the war. For many
women they started their first jobs and they had shown society that they were fit to vote. I think that WWI
played an important role in fostering an identity for women’s suffrage and giving women a chance to prove
themselves worthy, which they did, very well.
Before WWI had made an impact on the women’s lives, 1.7 million women were domestic servants. Domestic
Servants are people who work inside a household and help them with household services such as:
Housekeeping, Cleaning, Household maintenance and providing care for children and or elderlies. WWI really
did help women to get better jobs such as nurses, factory workers and sewing bandages, it helped them to
gain these better jobs because they were now full time workers instead of staying at home, while the men did
all the work. However, there have been instances such as women getting jobs at TNT factories and turning
yellow from head to toe and in which 400 workers died from overexposure. They have also gotten long term
health problems such as jaundice and mercury poisoning. On top of that, the governments covered up issues
such as the TNT overexposure. This made it tough for other women to know the risks of working there and the
same accidents occured to them as well. Before WWI and before women had gained suffrage the women’s
had to fight in order to gain: Social Status, Political Status and Economic Status. These were all things that
men had just for being born as a male sex. Women did lots of things in order to catch the public’s eye and get
them to support the Suffrage Movement, even though the right to vote should have come to women with no
gender discrimination, women still fought hard to get what they deserve. Before WWI made an impact on the
movement and before women had gained suffrage, their lives would have been a struggle for them and very
unfair compared to the lives of men, for example women were treated with a lower standard compared to
men. As society believed that men were superior to women, they were treated with a better and higher
standard than women. This made women’s desire for change and gaining equality a very strong one as they
were sick and tired of being treated like they weren’t important and that men were by far better than them,
which in my opinion is not true.

The Women’s Suffrage movement had many positive effects on women. For example because of the
movement more women and girls are coming to think of themselves as equals to men, they are finally stepping
up and doing things that were not possible for them to do before they had suffrage. The movement has made
a great impact on girls school lives, as there are no more instruments off limits to girls in school bands and
they are free to play instruments such as: Saxophone, Trumpets and Trombones. Even with teaching jobs
there are now females teaching maths and science now whereas those subjects were preserved only for men
back in the day. In short all these are great examples on how The Women’s Suffrage Movement has made a
positive impact on women’s lives and how people broke free from the idea of women being incapable and
weak. All of these examples were only possible because of the movement, and I believe that if women had
gained suffrage earlier on than all of these examples would not have been a dream for them. Equality even
now is still a problem in our society, if men and women have the capability to do things just as well as it each
other then what is the point and reasoning behind gender discrimination. After all we are all human.

This research indicates that WWI made various different effects on The Women’s Suffrage Movement, but
overall the effects it had were very good on the women’s lives and the suffrage. Yes, there were minor
incidents that occured in some war jobs, but along with that many more women found good jobs for the first
time and had shown society that they could handle men’s work. The impact from WWI had helped women to
gain suffrage and get some form of equality to men. Getting the suffrage meant women were finally on the
right track to getting equality, something they should not be fighting to earn. Women have had a very unfair
past, and things like equality and suffrage should not have been something that is only available to certain
types of people and instead it should have been something that is open to all. The voting should have been
their choice, and women should not have had a label put on them and be held back from accomplishing great
things.