February 6 1918 – 24 Shevat 5678
Royal assent was granted to Parliament’s Representation of the People Act, giving British women the vote after half a century of struggle. The campaign for the legislation turned violent after Emmeline Pankhurst and her sister suffragettes split from the National Movement for Women’s Rights to found the radical Women’s Social and Political Union in 1903. The union’s hunger strikes, window smashing, and arson were widely decried as “unladylike,” prompting author Israel Zangwill, whose wife helped found the Jewish League for Woman Suffrage in 1912, to quip, “Ladylike means are all very well if you are dealing with gentlemen; but you are dealing with politicians.” Female property owners over thirty could vote after 1918, but it took another decade to extend suffrage to all women over twenty-one.
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