Sunday, March 18, 2012

Suffragettes

While doing my best to fight Irish stereotypes - i.e. not drinking on St. Patrick's day - I listened to this incredible documentary (I still have the MP3 if anyone wants to listen) about the suffregette movement in the UK (and Ireland) one hundred years ago.

Women fighting for the vote and their civil rights; bombs planted in cabinet ministers houses; torture of suffragettes in prisons by the authorities - all relayed by nice old women on recordings made in the 70s.

I had no idea how gritty and tough the fight for women's suffrage was!

Interestingly, after the vote was won by women the point was made in the documentary that there was still a lot inequality left to tackle.

The same point was made at the end of Ken Burns' documentary on the civil war - changing the law is easier (a four year war which killed hundreds of thousands) than changing people's mindsets.

3 comments:

Nana Podungge said...

Reading this post reminds me of a movie "Iron Jawed Angels". I couldn't agree more with you how tough those women were.

I also remember one scene of "Changeling" the movie where the main character -- a woman, I forgot her name :) -- was put in an asylum because she was struggling to get justice from LAPD. In the nineteenth century as well as the beginning of the twentieth century how easily men put women into asylums only because they did things which were considered not 'appropriate' to be done by women. :'(

Unknown said...

Yeh, I really had my eyes open - they were gutsy ppl!

amellie said...

And this was done in the 70s. Not too long ago. Wow.