Laura Clay was born in White Hall, Kentucky. Her parents were abolitionists, and her mother, who supported women’s rights, insisted that her six children, including her four daughters, would receive a good education. During the Civil War, she attended a girls’ school in Lexington and Mrs. Sarah Hoffman’s Finishing School in NYC. Afterward, she returned home and helped her mother run the estate. In 1878, her parents divorced, and her mother, who inherited White Hall, remained homeless since the law in Kentucky enabled men to claim all their wives’ property in case of a separation. It led Clay and her sisters to join the women’s rights movement. Clay also joined the Kentucky Federation of Women’s Club and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). In 1881, her sister Mary Barr Clay (who later served as president of the American Woman Suffrage Association – AWSA) and Lucy Stone, then president of the AWSA, appointed Clay, at 32, to chair the organization’s annual meeting in its first time to be held in Louisville, Kentucky. Following the convention, she co-founded the Kentucky Woman Suffrage Association, the first suffrage organization in the South. In 1888, Clay and her sisters founded the Kentucky Equal Rights Association (KERA) and served as its first president for 24 years. Under her leadership, the organization worked tirelessly to improve the legal status of women. Among its many achievements are protecting married women’s property, wages to women, joint guardianship of children, raising the age of marriage consent for girls from 12 to 16, establishing juvenile courts, requiring state women’s mental facilities to have female doctors on staff, persuading Central University and Transylvania University to admit women students, and inspiring the University of Kentucky to build its first women dormitory. In the next decade, Clay became active in the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) and worked alongside some of the movement’s most prominent figures, including Alice Stone Blackwell, Carrie Chapman Catt, and Alice Lloyd. She gave speeches throughout the country promoting women’s suffrage and founding suffrage societies in various states. Soon, she was appointed chair of NAWSA’s Southern Committee and, in 1896, was elected as its auditor. In 1903, she was elected chair of the organization’s new Increase of Membership Committee, serving there for 20 years. Clay believed that the states should grant women voting rights, so in 1913, she left the KERA and the NAWSA, opposing Susan B. Anthony’s support of a federal amendment. In 1916, she was appointed vice-president-at-large of the Southern States Woman Suffrage Conference, which also supported the states’ rights approach over the federal amendment. She continued to be active in various women’s rights organizations, and in 1920, at 71, she established the Democratic Women’s Club of Kentucky. In the last decade of her life, she left the public eye and focused on promoting women’s rights in her Episcopal church, where she worked on allowing women delegates to church councils. She died at the age of 92. Read more...

Clara González Carrillo was born in Remedios, Republic of Panama. Her father was a Spanish immigrant, and her mother was of indigenous descent. When she was two years old, her father refused to supply weapons to the dominant political group of their region, and the family fled the country to Costa Rica, staying there for four years. She attended the Santa Familia School, which trained the girls in domestic life, learning sewing and home economics. Afterward, she won a scholarship to the Escuela Normal de Institutoras, earning a teaching degree. While working as a teacher, she studied law at the Escuela Nacional de Derecho (National School of Law). In 1924, at 24, she became the first woman in Panama to earn a Bachelor of Law and began her law career when the law changed in 1925, allowing women to practice law. In 1923, while still in school, she co-founded the Partido Nacional Feminista (National Women’s Party), promoting women’s rights and suffrage. The party established the Escuela de Cultura Femenina (School of Feminine Culture) to provide professional, educational, and social development for women. At the time, González became involved with socialist and anti-imperialist groups, and in addition to her civil rights and suffrage activities, she became an advocate for social and economic justice. In 1927, at 29, she won a scholarship to New York University, where she earned a doctorate in law. During her time in the US, the Inter-American Commission of Women (IACW) was established, and she became Panama’s representative. She worked on legal issues and women’s rights in the Pan-American Union office and led their research on the status of women’s rights in different nations. Over time, González felt that the organization withheld funding from the Latin American activists and denied them leadership posts, and in 1930, she left the IACW and returned to Panama. On her return, she taught economics, political science, and sociology at the National Institute, and later criminology, family law, and juvenile justice at the newly-founded University of Panama. She continued to advocate for women’s rights and rejoined the National Women’s Party. In 1938, she broadened her activities and became a member of the Mexican organization Frente Único Pro-Derechos de la Mujer (the Sole Front for Women’s Rights). In 1943, at 45, González married Charles A. Behringer, an American civil engineer. The following year, she founded the Unión Nacional de Mujeres (National Women’s Union); when women were granted the right to vote in 1945, she ran for national deputy of the Constitutional Assembly and the vice-presidency of Panama but lost in both elections. She continued her social activities, as an organizer of the Popular Centers of Culture for Adults, as an official in the International Federation of Women Lawyers, and worked with UNESCO on child welfare issues. In 1951, 53 years old González became the first woman in Panama to be appointed as a juvenile court judge. In this role, she assisted in drafting the Juvenile Code, which established the treatment of juvenile delinquents; she also founded the Chapala Juvenile Reformatory. In 1964, she retired and moved with her husband to West Covina, California. She returned to Panama when her husband died two years later. In 1972, she went through a hip surgery that caused her leg amputation and limited mobility. She died at the age of 91. Read more...

Anne Henrietta Martin was born in Empire, Nevada, and grew up in Reno. Graduating from Bishop Whitaker’s School for Girls at 19, she went to study history at the University of Nevada and then for a second B.A. and M.A in history from Stanford University. In 1897, at 22, she founded Nevada State University’s history department, heading the department for two years before resuming her studies at Columbia University, Chase’s Art School in NYC, the University of London, and the University of Leipzig. Then, she worked as an art history instructor at the University of Nevada for several years. In 1909, at 34, Martin took a leave of absence and traveled to Asia and Europe. While in England, she became associated with leaders of the suffrage movement, joined the socialist Fabian Society, and became an active member of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), working alongside Christabel and Emmeline Pankhurst. She organized meetings and street protests and published short stories and political articles under the pen name of Anne O’Hara. In the fall of 1911, she returned to Nevada, joined The Equal Franchise Society, and was elected as its president the following year. Under Martin’s leadership, the campaign for women’s rights prospered. She went on a speaking tour throughout the state, convincing male voters to enfranchise women. Her goal was achieved on November 3rd, 1914, when women’s suffrage passed by popular vote in Nevada. Following her success, she was asked to join the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) but left for the more militant organization of the National Woman’s Party, elected as its first national chairman in 1916. In addition to this position, Martin served as president of the Nevada Women’s Civic League and the delegate to the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. At 43, Martin decided to exercise her new right and became the first woman to run for US Senate. She ran as an independent candidate representing Nevada in 1918 and 1920, addressing various social topics, such as labor issues and the nationalization of railroads and other public utilities. Though she lost twice, she did win 18% of the vote in 1918 and 20% in 1920. In 1921, Martin moved to Carmel, California. For the next 30 years, she advocated for social causes, women’s equality, and farmers’ markets, believing it would benefit both consumers and laborers by eliminating the cost of middlemen. She died at the age of 76. Read more...

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to free parents. At 3, both of her parents had died, and she went to live with her maternal aunt and uncle, who were civil rights activists and abolitionists. She attended the Watkins Academy for Negro Youth, which her uncle had founded, and at 13, began to work as a nursemaid for a Quaker family who owned a bookshop. In her free time, she continued her education by herself, reading the books in the shop and sharpening her writing skills. At 14, she began publishing her poems in antislavery journals, such as Frederick Douglass’ The Liberator. In 1845, at 20, she published her first verse collection, titled Forest Leaves. At 26, she moved to Wilberforce, Ohio, where she taught domestic science at Union Seminary, a school for free African-Americans, where she was the first female teacher. After two years, she moved to teach at another school in York, Pennsylvania, joined the American Anti-Slavery Society and continued to publish her poems. In 1854, at 29, she delivered her first antislavery speech called The Elevation and Education of Our People, which received praise. Afterward, she embarked on a two-year lecturing tour in Maine, in which she often recited from her second book, Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects. She became a popular orator, and over the next eight years, she gave lectures across the US and Canada. She published essays, novels, and short stories, in which she wrote about the observations of her traveling, expressing her thoughts about racism, abolition, feminism, temperance, and classism. In 1860, at the age of 35, she married Fenton Harper. When he died four years later, she resumed her lectures and began to connect with women’s rights advocates, such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. In 1866, at the National Woman’s Rights Convention, she gave a speech titled We Are All Bound Up Together, calling for the inclusion of Black women in the suffrage movement, emphasizing that Black women were facing racism in addition to sexism. The next day, the attendees formed the American Equal Rights Association (AERA) to advocate for African-Americans’ and women’s right to vote. In the short time the AERA operated, Harper served on its Finance Committee. In 1870, following the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment, which granted Black men the right to vote, Harper began to work with the Freedmen’s Bureau in Mobile, Alabama, to encourage as many people to use their right to vote. She detailed her encounters with the newly freed men and their struggles in her poem collection, Sketches of Southern Life. In the next two decades, Harper was involved in numerous reform organizations. She headed the Colored Section of the National Woman’s Christian Temperance Union in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, served as the director of the American Association of Education of Colored Youth, and co-founded the National Association of Colored Women alongside Harriet Tubman and Margaret Murray Washington, later serving as its vice president. During this time, she continued to publish her work, including 12 books and countless essays and articles. She died of heart failure at the age of 85. Read more...

Millicent Garrett Fawcett was born in Aldeburgh, England. At 12, she left her family to attend a boarding school in London. There, she met the philosopher John Stuart Mill, who introduced her to women’s rights activists, including Henry Fawcett, a Member of Parliament who was 14 years older than her, and in 1867 the couple got married. After the wedding, she worked as her husband’s secretary and started her writing career. She published articles and essays discussing women’s issues and her beliefs on equal opportunities for women and specifically women’s education. At 22, Fawcett attended her first suffrage movement meeting and soon joined the London Suffrage Committee. In the following year, she gave a speech at the first public pro-suffrage meeting, after which she became one of the leading speakers of the movement, giving lectures on the importance of women voting rights, mostly in schools for girls, women’s colleges, and adults education centers. In 1870, 23 years old Fawcett published the textbook Political Economy for Beginners, which became an immediate success, running through ten editions, translated into several languages, and aspired two novels. Two years later, she and her husband published a collection of essays titled Essays and Lectures on Social and Political Subjects. In 1875, she co-founded a college for women at the University of Cambridge, Newnham Hall, and served as its council. After her husband died in 1884, Fawcett sold her houses and moved in with her sister at Gower Street, Bloomsbury. She took a year off from public speaking. On her return to the Central Committee for Women’s Suffrage, they asked her to administer the joint meetings of the suffrage societies that merged into the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) in 1897. In 1907, she was appointed president of the NUWSS. Her campaign’s approach to achieving women’s right to vote was moderate and peaceful, in contrast to the militant position of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), led by Emmeline Pankhurst. She gave lectures, wrote articles and pamphlets. During WW1, Fawcett harnessed the NUWSS activities for the war efforts, supporting the services of hospitals in training camps in Scotland and Russia. The organization continued to campaign for women’s suffrage by emphasizing the contributions of women during wartime. Fawcett’s plan worked, mainly due to the movement’s actions during the war, the Representation of the People Act passed in 1918, giving women limited voting rights. Shortly after, when she was 72, Fawcett retired from her position as the president of the NUWSS, dedicating her time to writing. She also continued to launch and support other human rights campaigns, such as equal divorce rights, criminalizing incest, raising the age of consent, women’s access to the legal profession, stopping the white slave trade, and regulating prostitution in India. One of her most notable campaigns was against the Contagious Diseases Act, which required prostitutes to be tested for sexually transmitted diseases and imprisoned if positive, while the clients who infected the women were not required to get tested. She argued that the double standards of this and similar laws would continue to exist until women would be part of the decision-making process. Fawcett died at the age of 82 after dedicating her life to giving women a voice and promoting their rights, paving the way for generations of activist, feminist women. Read more...

Clara Campoamor Rodríguez was born in Madrid, Spain, to a working-class family. Her father died when she was ten years old, and she had to leave school to help her mother and younger siblings. She did the house works, and at 13, worked as a seamstress while educating herself in her free time. At 21, Campoamor was hired as a telegraph assistant at the Post Office in San Sebastián and soon worked her way up in the office and then as a typing teacher in Madrid. At the time, Campoamor became involved in politics. She took a second job at a liberal newspaper, joined numerous women’s organizations, and published political commentaries at a liberal newspaper. In 1920, Campoamor realized that she had to further her primary education to get higher positions. So, at the age of 32, she began to take evening classes at a secondary school. After earning her university diploma, she enrolled in law school, and at the age of 36, Campoamor became the second woman to join the Madrid Bar Association. She founded a law firm specializing in women’s and children’s issues, defending women’s rights in divorce and paternity cases, and fighting for child labor laws. She also promoted women’s rights outside of work, co-founded the International Federation of Women Lawyers and the Spanish Women’s League for Peace. In 1931, after the Second Spanish Republic was formed, 43 years old Campoamor was among the 21 deputies elected to draft the constitution. Representing the Radical Party, Campoamor fought against sexual discrimination, for women’s right to divorce, for the legal equality of children born within and outside marriage, and for universal suffrage – the “women’s vote.” Promoting the cause, she became the first woman to address the Parliament’s plenary session in front of 470 men and one woman, arguing that preventing women from exercising their right to vote violates the natural law. Campoamor’s advocacy was opposed by both sides of the Parliament, including members of her party. She left the party and continued to represent women’s rights as an independent member of the assembly. With endless efforts and the support of women’s activists throughout the country, Campoamor managed to include in the new constitution the article that stated that “Citizens of either sex, over 23 years of age, will have the same rights elections as determined by law.” After the constitution got declared, Campoamor was outcasted by her party and lost her parliament seat in the elections of 1933. In 1936, on the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Campoamor had to flee the country. First, she moved to Argentina, where she worked as a translator, and then, after being denied to return to Spain by the Franco regime, she settled in Lausanne, Switzerland, where she returned to work as a lawyer. She died in exile at the age of 84. Read more...

Born Letitia Ellen Mooney on a farm at Chatsworth, Ontario, grew up in Manitoba. She had received formal education only when she was nine, learning reading and writing and discovering the wonders of literature, which shaped her liberal thinking. At 16, she got her teaching certificate from the Winnipeg Normal School and started teaching at Hazel school near Manitou, Manitoba. As a teacher, she implemented her progressive views regarding girls’ education, including introducing football for girls and boys. In 1892, at 19, she took a teaching position at the Manitou school and stayed at a family of a Methodist minister. The minister’s wife, Annie E. McClung, was a women’s suffrage supporter and the provincial president of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), who inspired and influenced McClung to become an active member of the organization. She developed a romantic relationship with the family’s second son, Wesley, and the couple married in 1896. After the wedding, she stopped working but remained socially active in the WTCU, and other organizations, including the Methodist Ladies’ Aid, Epworth League for Methodist youth, and the Economics Association. At the age of 29, McClung wrote a short story for a contest in an American family magazine. Although she did not win, the story was the basis for her first novel, Sowing Seeds in Danny, published in 1908. It became a best-seller, and afterward, McClung continued to publish articles, short stories, and books in Canada and the US. In her writing, she expressed her beliefs on social issues, such as laws against women, battering of wives and children, single motherhood, and the land and culture right of the native population. In 1911, McClung and her family moved to Winnipeg, where she joined the local women’s organizations, including the Canadian Women’s Press Club and the Local Council of Women. She co-founded the suffrage’s Political Equality League and became one of the most effective public speakers for the cause. In the 1914 elections, McClung played a leading role in the Liberal campaign against the Conservative Premier of Manitoba, who opposed women’s suffrage. She did not enjoy the fruits of her success because when Manitoba became the first province in Canada to grant women the vote in 1916, she already lived in Edmonton, Alberta. In Edmonton, she continued her activism, fighting for various causes, such as women’s suffrage, property rights for married women, mothers’ allowances, prohibition, factory safety legislation, and medical care for school children. After WW1, she continued the campaign for suffrage, emphasizing the importance of women’s contribution to society after they had filled in for the men working positions during the war. In 1921, 48 years old McClung won the Liberal seat at the Alberta Legislative Assembly, serving in this position until 1926. In the following year, she became part of what became known as The Famous Five. A group of five women, Emily Murphy, Louise Crummy McKinney, Henrietta Muir Edwards, and Irene Parlby, petitioned the Supreme Court to recognize women as Persons. Though rejected in Canada, they appleade to the British Privy Council, who ruled that women included in the term Persons, thus can serve in the Senate. In 1933, McClung moved to Lantern Lane in Vancouver Island, where she invested herself in writing, completing her two-volume autobiography Clearing in the West: My Own Story, published in 1935, as well as four more novels and various short stories, essays, and a syndicated column. She was a member of various social organizations, continued to give public speeches, and in 1936 she became the first woman to be appointed to the new Canadian Broadcasting Corporation board of governors. In the last ten years of her life, McClung suffered from arthritis and heart problems that limited her activities. She died at the age of 78. Read more...

Born Mary Morris Burnett in Oberlin, Ohio. After graduating high school at 16, she attended Oberlin College, where she was the only Black student when higher education was uncommon for women of any race. In 1886, at the age of 20, she received her Bachelor of Arts degree and became a teacher at Bethel University in Little Rock, Arkansas, where she taught math, science, history, and Latin. The following year, she was appointed assistant principal of Union High School – the highest position held by a Black woman in the state. In 1891, at 25, she married William H. Talbert, and the couple moved to Buffalo, New York. There, she became an active member of the Old Michigan Avenue Baptist Church, establishing a Sunday school for teachers and founding the Christian Culture Club. Soon, she broadened her activities to promote women’s rights and equality for African-Americans and became a civic leader in her community. In 1889, Talbert co-founded the Phyllis Wheatley Club, which became the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs (NACWC), and later served as its president. In 1901, she established a literary society and forum called the Christian Culture Congress. That year, she led a campaign against the exclusion of Black people from the Pan-American Exposition Planning Commission. It resulted in the addition of the Negro Exhibit that highlighted the economic and cultural achievements of African-Americans. In 1905, Talbert hosted a secret meeting of 30 black activists, among them John Hope and W.E.B DuBois, in which they founded the Niagara Movement. Though short-lived, it was the forerunner to the National Association of Advancement for Colored People (NAACP), founded four years later. Throughout the years, Talbert held various positions in the NAACP. She co-founded its chapters in New York, Louisiana, and Texas. She was a member of its board, served as its vice president, and chaired its Anti–Lynching Committee. During WW1, Talbert served as a YMCA secretary and Red Cross nurse in France. She joined the Women’s Committee of National Defense and traveled through Europe, giving lectures and selling Liberty Bonds to support the war effort. When the war had ended, she joined the Women’s Committee on International Relations to select women for various positions in the League of Nations and embarked on a lecturing tour in US and Europe, speaking on the importance of race relations and women’s rights. She believed that women of all races and classes needed to work together for women’s suffrage, and she dedicated most of her time advocating for this cause in Buffalo alongside her white counterparts. In her last years, she worked tirelessly to promote the Dyer Anti–Lynching Bill to establish lynching as a federal crime, and in 1922 she co-founded the International Council of Women of the Darker Races. She died in the following year, at 57, after dedicating three decades to promote women’s and civil rights, founding and playing significant roles in various organizations, paving the way for human rights activists to follow. Read more...

Marie Thérèse Casgrain was born in Saint-Irénée-les-Bains, Canada, to a wealthy family. At the age of 8, she was sent to a boarding school of the Dames du Sacré-Coeur order at Sault-aux-Récollets. After graduation, she wanted to attend university, but her father refused, believing that a woman of her status should learn to manage a household. In 1916, at 20, she married Pierre-François Casgrain, a wealthy Liberal politician. In 1918, she traveled to Ottawa with her husband for the Parliament session opening. There, she became aware of the importance of women’s right to vote, given in the previous year by the Wartime Elections Act only to wives, widows, mothers, and sisters of soldiers serving overseas and in reality excluding the majority of women. She became a leading figure of the women’s suffrage movement in Quebec, using her family and husband’s political contacts to promote the cause. She wrote letters to influential people, made public speeches, and in 1921, at the age of 25, she founded the Provincial Franchise Committee for women’s suffrage. In 1928, Casgrain started heading the Ligue des droits de la femme for 14 years. The organization fought for women’s right to vote at the provincial level, which was eventually approved only in 1940, making Quebec the last province in Canada in which women could vote. During WW2, she founded and was co-president of the Women’s Surveillance Committee for the Wartime Prices and Trade Board. In 1942, at the age of 42, Casgrain ran for Canadian Parliament as the Independent Liberal candidate for Charlevoix-Saguenay – a federal electoral district in Quebec and reached second place. She tried six more times, both federally and provincially, but lost. She continued to advocate for women’s rights, and in 1945 she triumphantly campaigned to enable women in Quebec to receive family allowance cheques in their name, not in the husband’s name alone. After the war, Casgrain left the Liberal Party to join the social democratic Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF). Two years later, she was nominated as the national vice-chair of the party, the only woman at its management level. In 1951, at 55, she was elected as the leader of the Québec wing of the CCF, becoming the first woman in Canada to head a political party. In 1960, she founded the League for Human Rights, and in the following year, she established and later served as president of the Québec branch of the Voice of Women – an anti-nuclear pacifist movement. Over time, she founded several more human rights organizations, including the Fédération des femmes du Québec and the Quebec Civil Liberties Union. In 1969, at 73, Casgrain was elected president of the Quebec section of the Consumers’ Association of Canada. In this position, she successfully lobbied for forming a federal minister of consumer affairs. In the following year, 74 years old Casgrain was appointed by the Prime Minister to the Senate of Canada, serving only nine months before reaching the mandatory retirement age of 75. Afterward, she lobbied against compulsory retirement from any job. Even in the last decade of her life, Casgrain did not stop her activism work and continued fighting for various social causes, such as education, housing, health care, unemployment, workers’ rights, and Indigenous rights. She died at the age of 85. Read more...

Emmeline Pankhurst was born to a wealthy and politically active family in Manchester, England. Her parents were abolitionists and supporters of female suffrage. Growing up, she read her mother’s Women’s Suffrage Journal, and at 14, she started going with her to meetings. For her higher education, she attended the École Normale de Neuilly in Paris, where she learned chemistry, bookkeeping, and “feminine arts” such as embroidery. In 1878, at the age of 20, she met Richard Pankhurst, a 44 years old barrister who also advocated for women’s suffrage and other social causes, including education reform and freedom of speech. They married in the following year, and within ten years, they had five children. The couple agreed that Pankhurst would not become “a household machine” and remained active at the Women’s Suffrage Society. In 1886, the family moved to London, where Pankhurst and her sister opened a fabric shop while her husband unsuccessfully ran for Parliament. At the time, their house became a meeting place for activists and intellectuals, from socialists and suffragists to anarchists and radicals. In 1889, after inside conflicts within the National Society for Women’s Suffrage, Pankhurst and her husband founded the Women’s Franchise League (WFL). The WFL focused on more aspects of equal rights for women, like divorce and inheritance. 4 years later, the family returned to Manchester, where 30 years old Pankhurst continued to promote women’s suffrage and became involved with the Women’s Liberal Federation, an adjunct organization of the Liberal Party. In the same year, Pankhurst resigned from the WFL to join the newly formed Independent Labour Party (ILP) but got denied by the local branch because of her gender, eventually joining the ILP nationally. In 1894, Pankhurst was appointed as the Poor Law Guardian in Chorlton-on-Medlock, overseeing the economic, nutrition, and hygienic needs of the poor residences in the area. Witnessing the harsh conditions at the workhouses – an accommodation and employment facilities for the poor, pushed her to promote reform in the Board of Guardians who was in charge of the institutions. In 1898, when she was 39 years old, her husband died, leaving her with debts. Pankhurst moved with her children to a small house and started working for the Registrar of Births and Deaths in Chorlton. There, she gained insight into the conditions of the women and the different treatment men and women received for the same issues, such as illegitimacy. As a member of the Manchester School Board, she saw more examples of injustice towards girls and women and the unequal treatment they receive compared to boys and men. At the time, she re-opened her fabric store to have an additional income. Throughout the years, Pankhurst’s children had different approaches to her activism. Still, after her husband died, all of them became involved with the suffrage movement, especially her daughters Christabel and Sylvia. By 1903, at 44, Pankhurst realized that moderate speeches and polite methods yielded no progress from the members of Parliament, coming to believe that only militant actions would provide results. On 10 October 1903, Pankhurst, Christabel, and other activists founded the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), which later became the Women’s Party – a women-only organization devoted solely to voting rights, guided by the motto – Deeds Not Words. At first, the WSPU took non-violent actions, such as lectures, rallies, petition signing, talking to parliament members, and publishing a newsletter. Over time, their activities became more radical, including harassing parliament members, provoking the police, vandalizing public art, window-breaking, and arson. These tactics led to recurring arrestments of the WSPU members, including Pankhurst herself, who got imprisoned seven times. Their imprisonments were sometimes deliberate, believing that it would bring publicity to the cause. In 1909, the imprisoned WSPU members began to engage in hunger strikes, which often led to violent force-feeding. During WW1, Pankhurst decided to moderate the WSPU’s activities and support the government as well as the cause by encouraging women to engage with the war efforts, taking the place of the men on factory jobs while they were fighting on the war front. Women’s contributions during wartime led to the passage of the Representation of the People Act of 1918, which gave women over the age of 30 limited voting rights. Within a few months, another bill granted women the option to be elected to Parliament. After the war, Pankhurst became concerned about the rise of Bolshevism, and she joined the Conservative Party and ran for a seat in the Parliament. Her campaign ran short due to poor health, a result of years of lecture tours, imprisonments, and hunger strikes. Eventually, she moved into a nursing home, where she died at the age of 69. Less than a month later, Pankhurst’s 40 years campaign paid off when the British Parliament gave women full equality voting rights. Read more...