Women and the vote

From peaceful campaigning to militant tactics, the fight for women's voting rights lasted many years. Find out how their goals were achieved, with full equality with men being won in 1928

• The campaign for the right to vote
• Early suffragist campaigning
• Petitions
• The Ladies' Gallery
• Start of the suffragette movement
• 'Deeds not words'
• Women's Freedom League
• Male supporters of women's suffrage
• Anti-suffragists
• Suffrage in wartime
• Women get the vote
• Women in the Commons
• Women and the Lords

Follow the dates and legislation that mark milestones in women's struggle for the right to vote

Take your women's suffrage research further with additional material and parliamentary sources

Find out how women use their vote today and how times have changed since women first won the vote in 1918

A podcast of interviews with archivists, curators, police and MPs about the actions of suffragettes and suffragists in Parliament

Explore the Parliamentary collections for documents and images about Women and the Vote

• The 19th century and suffragists
• The Suffragettes
• Nancy Astor
• The Vote and afterwards
• Eleanor Rathbone: A Most Independent Member
• The 1866 Women's Suffrage petition
• Speaker's Conference on Electoral Reform 1916/7
• The Ladies' Gallery and the Grille

Case studies on women's suffrage and women and Parliament.

• What Difference Did the War Make? World War One and Votes for Women
• Suffragettes in Trousers
• Millicent Garrett Fawcett
• Emily Wilding Davison and Parliament

Eight documents from the Parliamentary Archives and the Women's Library recognised by UNESCO and brought together in a display marking International Women's Day 2012

• Women's Suffrage UNESCO exhibition, 2012
• Petition circulated by the Women's Suffrage Petition Committee, 1866
• Founding of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), 1897
• Mary Lowndes Album, c.1908
• Suffragette Banner, 1908
• Writings related to imprisonment and force-feeding by Emily Wilding Davison, 1912
• 'Cat and Mouse' Act, 1913
• Equal Franchise Act 1928
• Stanley Baldwin to Millicent Fawcett, 1928

Learn more about Birmingham's influence on and links with the women's suffrage movement, particularly the suffragettes.

• Introduction
• The Right to Vote
• After the Case Study