With women outperforming men in a number of spheres, it’s easy to forget that equality (though still imperfect) was a hard-won process – and that many of the major social and political struggles that gradually put women on the same footing as men took place only recently.
The women’s suffrage movement began in 1872 but women finally won the right to vote on the same terms as men only in 1928. Girton College was established in 1869 especially to give women a chance to study at university but they had to ask permission to attend lectures and were not allowed to take exams. It was not until 1947 that female students became full members of the university.
Changes in legislation on a national level reflected a groundswell of opinion that challenged attitudes locally. In Cambridge, as elsewhere in the country, the struggles for parity between the sexes was played out at every strata of society – from the comfortable drawing rooms of well-heeled reformers to the dingy back kitchens where many working class women laboured largely unseen and for precious little pay.
A series of events staged by Cambridge Folk Museum starting on 9 May and continuing to the end of July will celebrate the part played by women in Cambridge in bringing about equal rights for women in the workplace and beyond. In particular Cambridge Women and Work marks the centenary of the Cambridge Branch of the National Union of Women Workers – an organisation that was concerned with a number of issues including employment, housing and social problems as well as suffrage.
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Image: Clockwise from top left: members of NUWW in 1930, Mrs Vinter, Mrs Cochrane, Leah Manning, Clara Rackham, Mrs Stevenson, Mrs Strachey, Miss Cattley, Mrs Keynes Credit: Cambridgeshire Collection
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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