Suffragettes Forever! The Story of Women and Power
Season 1
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.
Where to Watch Season 1
3 Episodes
- Episode 1E1
Episode 1The suffragette campaign was the inevitable conclusion of a fight that women, rich and poor, had been pursuing for hundreds of years against a system that gave men complete legal, political and physical control over the other half of the population. In this first programme Vickery describes how a wife was the property of her husband - who could if he chose, beat, rape or even sell her to another man. But the revolutionary politics of the late 18th century opened a crack in the door. - Episode 2
E2Episode 2Vickery introduces us to the spurned mistress of a prime minister, who lost custody of her own children but won the first piece of modern feminist legislation - child custody rights for mothers. Plus a passionate campaigner who raised the age of consent and overthrew pernicious laws against prostitutes, a Cambridge undergraduate who proved that girls could even be better at maths than boys and undermined the centuries old prejudice that a Cambridge education was for men only, and a certain Mrs Pankhurst and her daughters, who decided that after so many years of women campaigning for the vote, it was now time to resort to deeds rather than words. - Episode 3
E3Episode 3In the final episode of her story of British women’s fight for power, the historian Amanda Vickery explores how the Edwardian suffragette movement became a quasi-terrorist organisation. She asks what they achieved with their violent campaign and argues they are best understood as part of a war still going on today.