The Beginnings of the Movement for Gaining Women's Suffrage in Great Britain in the Second Half of the 1860s
2023
Abstract
The paper focuses on the first phase of women's efforts to gain the right to vote. There had been discussion over the preparation of the Second Reform Act about widening the franchise.
In 1866, a group of women gathered in the Kensington Society came up with an idea to create a petition which called for right for women householders to gain right to vote on the same basis as men did, without the distinction of sex. The petition of 1866 reached an unexpected number of signatures and MP John Stuart Mill presented the question of women's suffrage in the House of Commons.