Feminism in the United Kingdom

The first organised movement for British women's suffrage was the Langham Place Circle of the 1850s, led by Barbara Bodichon (née Leigh-Smith) and Bessie Rayner Parkes.

In 1851 the Sheffield Female Political Association was founded and submitted an unsuccessful petition calling for women's suffrage to the House of Lords.

Florence Nightingale demonstrated the necessity of professional nursing and warfare, and set up an educational system that tracked women into that field in the second half of the nineteenth century.

[citation needed] Under traditional common law, children were considered to belong to their father, who had full legal rights over them, both during and after the dissolution of a marriage.

This is exemplified by a ruling by Sir C. Cresswell in 1862, stating that: "It will probably have a salutary effect on the interests of public morality, that it should be known that a woman, if found guilty of adultery, will forfeit, as far as this Court is concerned, all right to the custody of or access to her children.

[25][26] In Britain, before 1857, the dissolution of a marriage was nearly impossible, being de facto restricted to the very wealthy, as it demanded either a complex annulment process or a private bill leading to an act of Parliament, with great costs for either.

[36] Based on her study of cases from the Homewood Retreat, Cheryl Krasnick Warsh concludes that "the realities of the household in late Victorian and Edwardian middle class society rendered certain elements—socially redundant women in particular—more susceptible to institutionalization than others.

"[citation needed] Bullough argues that prostitution in 18th-century Britain was a convenience to men of all social statuses, and economic necessity for many poor women, and was tolerated by society.

The main goal was to protect working men, soldiers and sailors near ports and army bases from catching venereal disease.

[45] The Act did receive a great deal of criticism as many believed that "household harmony could only be achieved by the total subordination of women to their husband".

Feminists learned to exploit photography and the media, and left a vivid visual record including images such as the 1914 photograph of Emmeline.

[54] More generally, Searle (2004) argues that the British debate was essentially over by the 1890s, and that granting the suffrage in 1918 was mostly a byproduct of giving the vote to male soldiers.

[56] The basic purpose of the act was, as stated in its long title, "... to amend the Law with respect to disqualification on account of sex", which it achieved in four short sections and one schedule.

Its broad aim was achieved by section 1, which stated that: A person shall not be disqualified by sex or marriage from the exercise of any public function, or from being appointed to or holding any civil or judicial office or post, or from entering or assuming or carrying on any civil profession or vocation, or for admission to any incorporated society (whether incorporated by Royal Charter or otherwise), [and a person shall not be exempted by sex or marriage from the liability to serve as a juror]…[57]The Crown was given the power to regulate the admission of women to the civil service by Orders in Council, and judges were permitted to control the gender composition of juries.

Close affiliation with Labour also proved to be a problem for the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship (NUSEC), which had little support in the Conservative party.

[67] The 1924 Labour government's social reforms created a formal split, as a splinter group of strict egalitarians formed the Open Door Council in May 1926.

A number of other women's periodicals also appeared in the 1920s, including Woman and Home, and Good Housekeeping, but whose content reflect very different aspirations.

[72][73] Annie Besant was tried in 1877 for publishing Charles Knowlton's Fruits of Philosophy,[74] a work on family planning, under the Obscene Publications Act 1857.

The first such women peers were four— Barbara Wootton and Stella Isaacs, who were sworn in on 21 October 1958, and Katharine Eliot and Irene Curzon, who took office the next day.

[87][88] Feminist writers of that period, such as Alva Myrdal and Viola Klein, started to allow for the possibility that women should be able to combine home with outside employment.

Even those women who regarded themselves as feminists strongly endorsed prevailing ideas about the primacy of children's needs, as advocated, for example, by John Bowlby the head of the Children's Department at the Tavistock Clinic, who published extensively throughout the 1950s and by Donald Winnicott who promoted through radio broadcasts and in the press the idea of the home as a private emotional world in which mother and child are bound to each other and in which the mother has control and finds freedom to fulfill herself.

Refuge was founded in 1971 in Chiswick, West London, as the modern world's first safe house for women and children escaping domestic violence.

[106][107] However Thatcher received scant credit from feminists for breaking the ultimate glass ceiling, because she herself avoided feminism, and expressed an intensely masculine style.

[108][109] R v R [1991] UKHL 12[a] is a court judgment delivered in 1991, in which the House of Lords determined that under English criminal law it is possible for a husband to rape his wife.

With Harman's cabinet post of Leader of the House of Commons, Brown allowed her to chair Prime Minister's Questions when he was out of the country.

It requires equal treatment in access to employment as well as private and public services, regardless of the protected characteristics of sex, age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, race, religion or belief, and sexual orientation.

In 2013, the first oral history archive of the United Kingdom women's liberation movement (titled Sisterhood and After) was launched by the British Library.

In 2016, a British receptionist was dismissed for not wearing high heels and she then started a petition which attracted sufficient support to be considered by the UK Parliament.

"[125] The petition gained widespread support from public figures such as Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and MPs Caroline Dinenage, Margot James and Tulip Siddiq.

[131] A person shall not be disqualified by sex or marriage from the exercise of any public function, or from being appointed to or holding any civil or judicial office or post, or from entering or assuming or carrying on any civil profession or vocation, or for admission to any incorporated society (whether incorporated by Royal Charter or otherwise), [and a person shall not be exempted by sex or marriage from the liability to serve as a juror]…[57]The Act applies to elections to: The Act does not apply to selection of candidates for the Mayor of London elections.