BBC - Suffragettes Forever! the Story of Women and Power (2015) Part 1

Suffragettes Forever! The Story of Women and Power

Historian Amanda Vickery uncovers the 300 year-long campaign by women for political and sex equality in Britain, revealing the largely forgotten heroines (and a few heroes) who fought for the cause. In this series, historian Amanda Vickery explores why, in the early 20th century, thousands of British women joined a violent militant organisation. In the struggle for women's political rights in Britain, the most iconic are the suffragettes - but for Vickery the story begins long before these Edwardian activists.

Part 1:

Historian Amanda Vickery explores why in the early 20th century thousands of British women joined a militant organisation, examining how the suffragette campaign was the inevitable conclusion of a fight that women had been pursuing for hundreds of years. In the first programme, she describes how the law meant a wife was the property of her husband - who could beat, rape or even sell her to another man if he so chose - but the revolutionary politics of the late 18th century opened the door to women's rights.

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