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With the new film Suffragette arriving in UK cinemas on Monday 12 October, here are some of the key moments of the women's suffrage movement
1832
Mary Smith presents the first women's suffrage petition to Parliament. In the same year, the Great Reform Act confirms the exclusion of women from the vote.
1866
MP John Stuart Mill presents a petition for women's suffrage to the Commons. It fails and suffrage societies are started in Edinburgh, London and Manchester.
1867
Second Reform Bill petition from women is presented to Parliament by Mill but fails. The National Society for Women's Suffrage is formed.
1881
The Isle of Man grants votes to women.
1884
An amendment to the Third Reform Bill, to include women in the vote, is rejected.
1897
The National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) forms with more than 20 national societies in support. Its leader is Millicent Garrett Fawcett, based in Gower Street, central London.
1903
Emmeline Pankhurst, a member of the Manchester suffragist set frustrated with the wait-and-see tactics of the NUWSS, forms the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) with her daughters Christabel and Sylvia.
1905
Militant campaign begins. Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney are arrested and imprisoned. "Deeds, not words" and "Votes for women" are adopted as campaign slogans.
1906
The Liberal Prime Minister, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, and 400 of 670 MPs favour women's suffrage. Rifts begin to show in the women campaigners' ranks. The NUWSS continues petitions and meetings while the WSPU protests at the Commons. WSPU members are arrested and imprisoned. A daily newspaper coins the term "suffragette".
1907
The NUWSS organises a London march and more than 3,000 women take part. The weather is so bad that it is dubbed the Mud March. The Women's Freedom League (WFL) arises from the WSPU, rejecting the dominance of the Pankhursts. The WFL founds the paper The Vote.
1908
At a mass rally in Hyde Park, 300,000 to 500,000 activists attend. The Liberal Prime Minister Herbert Asquith does not respond. To get his attention, suffragettes smash windows in Downing Street, using stones with written pleas tied to them. Some protesters chain themselves to railings.
1909
The start of hunger strikes and force-feeding. The Scottish WSPU member Marion Wallace Dunlop becomes the first hunger striker. An increasing number of more militant WSPU members are imprisoned.
1910
The Conciliation Bill, which would give women the vote, succeeds in the Commons but Asquith does not carry it through. The WSPU starts protests, including those called "Black Friday" in which many women are injured, some permanently and later fatally, and are sexually abused by police.
1911
A new Conciliation Bill passes but is stalled by the general election in November.??????
1912
The Parliamentary Franchise (Women) Bill is introduced and defeated by 222 votes to 208. There is a mass window-smashing campaign in protest.
1913
A ruling by the Speaker wrecks hopes of an amendment to include women in the Reform Bill. Militant bomb and arson campaigns and increasing arrests culminate in the passing of the "Cat and Mouse" Act, under which hunger strikers are temporarily released then rearrested to prevent them dying in police custody.

Emily Wilding Davison, arrested nine times and force-fed 49 times, decides to draw attention to the suffrage cause and disrupt the Derby. With a return train ticket and another to a dance that evening in her bag, she steps in front of the King's speeding horse Anmer, possibly to attach a WSPU banner of suffragette colours to its bridle. She dies four days later of a skull fracture and internal injuries. Her funeral is attended by thousands of women and tens of thousands lined the streets of London as her coffin passed by.
1914
Violent actions continue, with suffragettes trying to force their way into Buckingham Palace to petition the King. The First World War begins on 4 August. Suffrage prisoners are set free. Campaigning stops and suffragette leaders urge women to join the war effort. The NUWSS continues to represent women and to campaign for recognition of their work.
1917
The Electoral Reform Bill passes in the Commons. It gives votes only to certain women: those over the age of 30, those over 21 who own their own house or those married to householders.
1918
The Representation of the People Act is passed, allowing men over 21 and women over 30 to vote.
1919
The first female MP, Nancy Astor, enters the Commons.
1928
Amendment of the Representation of the People Act entitles everyone over the age of 21 to vote.
Suffragette is released in UK cinemas on Monday 12 October. Find out more at the Suffragette Facebook page and the official Suffragette website. #INSPIRINGWOMEN GALLERY
The #InspiringWomen Gallery celebrates the women that inspire you.

The Suffragettes, Rosa Parks and Emma Watson are all inspirational women who have stood up for what they believe in. Whether it's a celebrity, an activist, a teacher or a family member, who are the women that inspire you?

Upload an image of your inspiring woman to Facebook, Twitter or Instagram using the hash tags #InspiringWomen and #Suffragette and your inspiring woman will be celebrated in the #InspiringWomen gallery on the official Suffragette website.

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The long march to votes for women - suffragette timeline

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With the new film Suffragette arriving in UK cinemas on Monday 12 October, here are some of the key moments of the women's suffrage movement 1832 Mary Smith presents the first women's suffrage petition to Parliament. In the same year, the Great Reform Act confirms the exclusion of women from the vote.

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The Pankhurst family is closely associated with the militant campaign for the vote. In 1903 Emmeline Pankhurst and others, frustrated by the lack of progress, decided more direct action was required and founded the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) with the motto 'Deeds not words'.

Emmeline Pankhurst (1858-1928) became involved in women's suffrage in 1880. She was a founding member of the WSPU in 1903 and led it until it disbanded in 1918. Under her leadership the WSPU was a highly organised group and like other members she was imprisoned and went on hunger strike protests.

Women only

Membership of the WSPU was limited to women only. Emmeline Pankhurst's daughters, Christabel, Sylvia and Adela, were committed members.

WPSU members were determined to obtain the right to vote for women by any means and campaigned tirelessly and sometimes violently to achieve this aim. They felt that the impact of peaceful tactics seemed to have been exhausted and a different, more radical approach was needed.

Militant action

Initially the WSPU's tactics were to cause disruption and some civil disobedience, such as the 'rush' on Parliament in October 1908 when it encouraged the public to join them in an attempt to invade the House of Commons. 60,000 people gathered but the police cordon held fast.

However the lack of Government action led the WSPU to undertake more violent acts, including attacks on property and law-breaking, which resulted in imprisonment and hunger strikes.

These tactics attracted a great deal of attention to the campaign for votes for women.

Legal and constitutional support

Not all those campaigning for women's right to vote favoured militant action.

Moderate women's organisations, such as the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) led by Millicent Fawcett, were instrumental in building up the legal and constitutional support for the enfranchisement of women, but their contributions were often overshadowed by the high profile actions of the suffragettes.

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The Pankhurst family is closely associated with the militant campaign for the vote. In 1903 Emmeline Pankhurst and others, frustrated by the lack of progress, decided more direct action was required and founded the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) with the motto 'Deeds not words'.

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Facts, information and articles about Women's Suffrage Movement, the struggle for the right of women to vote

Women's Suffrage summary: The women's suffrage movement (aka woman suffrage) was the struggle for the right of women to vote and run for office and is part of the overall women's rights movement. In the mid-19th century, women in several countries-most notably, the U.S. and Britain-formed organizations to fight for suffrage. In 1888, the first international women's rights organization formed, the International Council of Women (ICW). Because the ICW was reluctant to focus on suffrage, in 1904 the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA) was formed by British women's rights activist Millicent Fawcett, American activist Carrie Chapman Catt, and other leading women's rights activists.

Women's Suffrage In Europe

The first country to grant national-level voting rights to women was the self-governing British colony of New Zealand, which passed the Electoral Bill in September 1893. The British colony of South Australia granted full suffrage in 1894, giving women the right to vote and to stand for parliament. Australia federated in 1901 and country-wide women's suffrage followed quickly in 1902; however, women of Australia's indigenous people were specifically excluded until 1949, when the right to vote in federal elections was granted to all indigenous people. Remaining restrictions were abolished in 1962.

Other countries followed soon after New Zealand, with limited rights granted to women in Sweden, Britain, Finland, and some U.S. states by the early 20th century. When World War I began in 1914, many suffrage organizations shifted their focus to supporting the war effort, although some activists continued to fight for suffrage. Because of manpower shortages in warring countries, women took on many roles traditionally held by men and changed the dominant idea of what women were capable of doing, giving further momentum to the suffrage movement. Britain's Parliament passed the Eligibility of Women Act in November 1918, which allowed women to be elected to Parliament. Ten years later, the Representation of the People Act granted women the right to vote. Following a path similar to Britain's, many countries-Denmark, Iceland, the USSR, the Netherlands, Canada, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Sweden, Germany, Luxembourg, the United States-had granted the vote to women by 1920.

Other European countries did not grant women the right to vote until much later-Spain in 1931, France in 1944, and Belgium, Italy, Romania, and Yugoslavia in 1946. Later still were Switzerland (1971) and Liechtenstein (1984). In Latin America, national suffrage was granted to women between 1929 (Ecuador) and 1946 (Argentina). In Africa, the right to vote was generally conferred on both men and women as colonial rule ended and nations became independent-the same is true for India, which granted universal suffrage with its constitution in 1949. Middle Eastern countries granted women the right to vote after World War II, although some countries, such as Saudi Arabia, do not have suffrage at all or have limited suffrage and exclude women completely (Kuwait).

Women's Suffrage In the United States

The suffrage movement in the United States gained prominence with the first women's rights convention in the world: the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. The convention was organized by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, active members of the abolitionist movement who met in England in 1840 at the World Anti-Slavery Convention. In 1851, Stanton was introduced by a mutual friend to Susan B. Anthony, who was most active in the temperance movement at the time. The two would form a life-long friendship and collaboration focused on obtaining suffrage. They formed the Woman's National Loyal League in 1863 to support the Thirteenth Amendment to abolish slavery and to campaign for full citizenship for blacks and women.

The National Woman Suffrage Association

In 1869, with slavery abolished, a rift developed in the suffrage movement over how to gain suffrage. Anthony and Stanton founded the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) and campaigned for a constitutional amendment for universal suffrage in America, and for other women's rights, such as changes in divorce laws and an end to employment and pay discrimination. Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe, and Josephine Ruffin formed the less-radical American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) to focus on obtaining suffrage for black men with the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and on winning women's right to vote state-by-state, ignoring the broader rights the NWSA was campaigning for.

By the 1880s, it became clear that the two organizations would be more effective if they merged back into one group, so they formed the National American Women Suffrage Association (NAWSA) in 1890, with Stanton as president and Anthony as vice president. Stanton's position was largely honorary-she departed on a 2-year European speaking tour shortly after being elected, leaving Anthony as acting president. NAWSA was a national, parent organization to hundreds of local groups that campaigned solely for women's right to vote. However, NAWSA alienated the more radical activists like Stanton, Matilda Joslyn Gage, and Olympia Brown who were campaigning for broader rights along with the right to vote.

In the early 20th century, NAWSA restructured itself and shifted it's tactics, recruiting celebrities to draw attention to the cause, allying with local women's clubs and some labor unions, and raising money to train and pay organizers to canvass for votes and enlist new members. NAWSA held many parades and rallies to draw attention to their cause, with its members wearing white uniforms and carrying banners to draw crowds and reporters.

In 1914, Alice Paul and Lucy Burns became dissatisfied with the leadership and direction of the NWSA and formed the Congressional Union. Both women had assisted and learned from the British suffrage movement, which was much more radicalized and militant than the NWSA. England's more militant suffragists faced violent confrontations with authorities and jail sentences; some went on hunger strikes while imprisoned and were made to endure force-feedings to prevent them from dying behind bars, which might increase public sympathy for their cause.

The Congressional Union initially focused on putting pressure on the Democratic Party, which controlled both houses of Congress and the White House. In 1916, the organization was renamed the National Woman's Party (NWP) and began a more militant campaign for suffrage, picketing and holding demonstrations in front of the White House.

Carrie Chapman Catt, NAWSA president from 1900 to 1904 and 1915 to 1920, was Anthony's hand-picked successor as the driving force of the organization. She led the final push toward a constitutional amendment, setting up a publicity bureau in Washington, D.C., in 1916 to exert immediate, face-to-face pressure on Congressmen. At the beginning of World War I, the NWP criticized the government for supporting democracy abroad while denying women the right to vote at home-blatant hypocrisy, in their view. Chapman Catt publicly distanced herself and NAWSA from the NWP, calling their behavior unladylike and disapproving of the bad publicity they generated for the movement. In June 1917, NWP members were arrested on the technical charge of obstructing traffic. Arrests and jail time, hunger strikes and force-feedings would continue for activists until the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified.

Ratification Of The Nineteenth Amendment

Tennessee became the last battleground state for ratification. There, as in other Southern states, the woman's suffrage movement was inextricably linked in the minds of many with the abolition movement, and old animosities still simmered. In Dixie, even more than in other parts of the country, feminism ran counter to a culture in which conservative religion, tradition, and respect for the law was deeply engrained. Too, powerful lobbying groups including liquor distilleries-the temperance movement and women's rights movement had long been comrades in arms-textile manufacturers and railroads opposed expanding women's rights. Additional opposition came from state's rights advocates, some of whom wanted to see women get the right to vote but felt that should be dealt with at the state level, not the national. On August 18, 1920, the Tennessee legislature narrowly approved the 19th Amendment. On August 31, the Tennessee House of Representatives voted to rescind their previous vote, but the U.S. Secretary of State had already proclaimed the amendment ratified on August 26.

Women's right to vote was achieved through the national and local efforts of both the NAWSA and the NWP. The labor shortage caused by World War I that allowed women to move into roles traditionally held by men also made it increasingly difficult for opponents to argue that women were unworthy of the vote on the grounds of physical and mental inferiority. With the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in sight, Chapman Catt formed the League of Women Voters during NAWSA's last meeting on February 14, 1920, to help newly enfranchised women exercise their right to vote.

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Facts, information and articles about Women's Suffrage Movement, the struggle for the right of women to vote Women's Suffrage summary: The women's suffrage movement (aka woman suffrage) was the struggle for the right of women to vote and run for office and is part of the overall women's rights movement.

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In August 1914 war was declared in Europe. The suffrage movement suspended its activities, the government released all suffragettes from prison, and the Pankhursts and others threw themselves into supporting Britain's war effort. Around a million women took on men's jobs as they went off to fight in the war.

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In my previous post, I addressed the impact of World War 1 on the Roaring Twenties. Now let's see what happens....
When Women Got the Vote and Left Their Corsets Behind Both Jo and Lou in SIRENS are conflicted about their roles as women. The men in their lives don't value them as individuals. In fact, until the 1920s women were really second-class citizens. Here's some of the context of the women's suffrage movement:
Wait...you didn't know that once upon a time not so long ago, women in America couldn't vote?

Until the 19 th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1920, women in this country had no voice. No say in politics. No choice in leadership. Yes, that's right - not even 100 years ago women were completely dependent on the men around them to make their choices for them.

(Just think about this, though - there are still many places in the world where women still have no vote, no choice, no freedom. We Americans are the lucky ones.)

Some states - like those in the West, where there was a shortage o f women - encouraged women to settle by granting them the right to vote at the state level. But the right of all citizens to vote in any election in America without regard to gender was not granted until the passage of the 19 th amendment.

Until the First World War (The Great War, 1914-1918) most young women in the lower classes worked "in service" - as maids or cleaning staff for the wealthier classes, while upper class young women were expected to marry successfully and raise children. A middle or upper middle class young woman working in an office, or teaching, or clerking? Unthinkable. But during the war, while men were away at the front, women went to work to make up for the employment shortage. When the war was over, women stayed in the work force rather than return to domesticity. Women in the work force spoke up about working conditions and health care and that paved the way for suffrage.

When Preside nt Woodrow Wilson announced that The Great War was a war for democracy, women took this as encouragement and began an even more active campaign for the vote, by picketing the White House and protesting in Washington for equal rights. Women had been involved in the suffrage movement for most of the early twentieth century, but the war catapulted the suffrage movement forward to success.

And corsets? Those horrifying undergarments were a form of social control. A study of tight lacing of corsets in the late 1800s showed that a corset could contract a woman's waist by between two and six inches. And the pressure the corset applied to a woman's body could be as high as 88 pounds, crushing the internal organs. Yikes! Women were so confined that they were unable to move, breathe, or digest properly. Early feminists made it their mission to convince women to abandon the corset, and the war sent women to work, and work required more freedom of movement in unrestrictive clothing, and so th e corset faded (thank goodness) into history.

Interestingly, women who worked for the suffrage movement and considered themselves feminists took umbrage at the young women who would be called flappers in the 1920s. Early feminists thought the Chanel-inspired loose clothing styles and looser moral standards of flappers were a sell-out to the cause of equality. Early feminists might have shed their corsets, but they didn't necessarily buy into the flapper behavior or the shorter skirts and hairstyles. The early feminists wanted to be taken seriously, and, really, how could someone who dressed in a frivolous costume that barely covered her bare skin be serious?

More on that fashion revolution in the next blog post on this tour!

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In my previous post, I addressed the impact of World War 1 on the Roaring Twenties. Now let's see what happens.... When Women Got the Vote and Left Their Corsets Behind Both Jo and Lou in SIRENS are conflicted about their roles as women. The men in their lives don't value them as individuals.

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Throughout the 1920s, women gained many new rights and spent less time inside the house. The 1920s for women consisted of famous female politicians, new looks, technology, and habits. Famous Female...

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In the 1920s, flappers-young women with new ideas about how to live-broke away from the Victorian image of womanhood. They dropped the corset, chopped their hair, dropped layers of clothing to increase ease of movement, wore make-up, created the concept of dating, and became a sexual person. In breaking away from conservative Victorian values, flappers created what many considered the "new" or "modern" woman.

Before the start of World War I, the Gibson Girl was the rage. Inspired by Charles Dana Gibson's drawings, the Gibson Girl arranged her long hair loosely on top of her head and wore a long straight skirt and a shirt with a high collar. In this image, she both retained femininity and broke through several gender barriers, for her attire allowed her to participate in sports, including golf, roller skating, and bicycling.

Then World War I started. The young men of the world were being used as cannon fodder for an older generation's ideals and mistakes. The attrition rate in the trenches left few with the hope that they would survive long enough to return home.

The young soldiers found themselves inflicted with an "eat-drink-and-be-merry-for-tomorrow-we-die spirit." Far away from the society that raised them and faced with the reality of death, many searched (and found) extreme life experiences before they entered the battlefield.

When the war was over, the survivors went home and the world tried to return to normalcy. Unfortunately, settling down in peacetime proved more difficult than expected.

During the war, the young men had fought against both the enemy and death in faraway lands, while the young women had bought into the patriotic fervor and aggressively entered the workforce. During the war, both the young men and women of this generation had broken out of society's structure. They found it very difficult to return. As Frederick Lewis Allen reported in his 1931 book Only Yesterday,

They found themselves expected to settle down into the humdrum routine of American life as if nothing had happened, to accept the moral dicta of elders who seemed to them still to be living in a Pollyanna land of rosy ideals which the war had killed for them. They couldn't do it, and they very disrespectfully said so.

Women were just as anxious as the men to avoid returning to society's rules and roles after the war. In the age of the Gibson Girl, young women did not date; they waited until a proper young man formally paid her interest with suitable intentions (i.e. marriage). However, nearly a whole generation of young men had died in the war, leaving nearly a whole generation of young women without possible suitors. Young women decided that they were not willing to waste away their young lives waiting idly for spinsterhood; they were going to enjoy life.

The "Younger Generation" was breaking away from the old set of values.

The term "flapper" first appeared in Great Britain after World War I, as a term which meant a young girl, still somewhat awkward in movement and who had not yet entered womanhood. In the June 1922 edition of the Atlantic Monthly, G. Stanley Hall described looking in a dictionary to discover what the evasive term "flapper" meant:

[T]he dictionary set me right by defining the word as a fledgling, yet in the nest, and vainly attempting to fly while its wings have only pinfeathers; and I recognized that the genius of 'slanguage' had made the squab the symbol of budding girlhood.

Authors such F. Scott Fitzgerald and artists such as John Held Jr. first brought the term to the U.S. reading public, half reflecting and half creating the image and style of the flapper. Fitzgerald described the ideal flapper as "lovely, expensive, and about nineteen." Held accentuated the flapper image by drawing young girls wearing unbuckled galoshes that would make a "flapping" noise when walking.

Many have tried to define flappers. In William and Mary Morris' Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins, they state, "In America, a flapper has always been a giddy, attractive, and slightly unconventional young thing who, in [H. L.] Mencken's words, 'was a somewhat foolish girl, full of wild surmises and inclined to revolt against the precepts and admonitions of her elders.'"

Flappers had both an image and an attitude.

The Flappers' image consisted of drastic-to some, shocking-changes in women's clothing and hair. Nearly every article of clothing was trimmed down and lightened in order to make movement easier.

It is said that girls "parked" their corsets when they were to go dancing. The new, energetic dances of the Jazz Age, required women to be able to move freely, something the "ironsides" of whalebone didn't allow. Replacing the pantaloons and corsets were underwear called "step-ins."

The outer clothing of flappers is even still extremely identifiable. This look, called "garconne" ("little boy"), was popularized by Coco Chanel. To look more like a boy, women tightly wound their chest with strips of cloth in order to flatten it.

The waists of flapper clothes were dropped to the hipline. She wore stockings-made of rayon ("artificial silk") starting in 1923-which the flapper often wore rolled over a garter belt. ¹⁰

The hem of the skirts also started to rise in the 1920s. At first, the hem only rose a few inches, but between 1925 and1927 a flapper's skirt fell just below the knee, as described by Bruce Bliven in his 1925 article "Flapper Jane" in The New Republic:

The skirt comes just an inch below her knees, overlapping by a faint fraction her rolled and twisted stockings. The idea is that when she walks in a bit of a breeze, you shall now and then observe the knee (which is not rouged-that's just newspaper talk) but always in an accidental, Venus-surprised-at-the-bath sort of way.

The Gibson Girl, who prided herself on her long, beautiful, lush hair, was shocked when the flapper cut hers off. The short haircut was called the "bob" which was later replaced by an even shorter haircut, the "shingle" or "Eton" cut.

The shingle cut was slicked down and had a curl on each side of the face that covered the woman's ears. Flappers often finished the ensemble with a felt, bell-shaped hat called a cloche.

Flappers also started wearing make-up, something that had previously been only worn by loose women. Rouge, powder, eye-liner, and lipstick became extremely popular. Sneered a shocked Bliven,

Beauty is the fashion in 1925. She is frankly, heavily made up, not to imitate nature, but for an altogether artificial effect-pallor mortis, poisonously scarlet lips, richly ringed eyes-the latter looking not so much debauched (which is the intention) as diabetic.

The flapper attitude was characterized by stark truthfulness, fast living, and sexual behavior. Flappers seemed to cling to youth as if it were to leave them at any moment. They took risks and were reckless.

They wanted to be different, to announce their departure from the Gibson Girl's morals. So they smoked. Something only men had done previously. Their parents were shocked: W. O. Saunders described his reaction in "Me and My Flapper Daughters" in 1927.

I was sure my girls had never experimented with a hip-pocket flask, flirted with other women's husbands, or smoked cigarettes. My wife entertained the same smug delusion, and was saying something like that out loud at the dinner table one day. And then she began to talk about other girls.

'They tell me that that Purvis girl has cigarette parties at her home,' remarked my wife. She was saying it for the benefit of Elizabeth, who runs somewhat with the Purvis girl. Elizabeth was regarding her mother with curious eyes. She made no reply to her mother, but turning to me, right there at the table, she said: 'Dad, let's see your cigarettes.'

Without the slightest suspicion of what was forthcoming, I threw Elizabeth my cigarettes. She withdrew a fag from the package, tapped it on the back of her left hand, inserted it between her lips, reached over and took my lighted cigarette from my mouth, lit her own cigarette and blew airy rings toward the ceiling.

My wife nearly fell out of her chair, and I might have fallen out of mine if I hadn't been momentarily stunned.

Smoking wasn't the most outrageous of the flapper's rebellious actions. Flappers drank alcohol. At a time when the United States had outlawed alcohol ( Prohibition), young women were starting the habit early. Some even carried hip-flasks full so as to have it on hand.

More than a few adults didn't like to see tipsy young women. Flappers had a scandalous image, defined in Jackie Hatton's "Flapper" entry in the 2000 St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture as the "giddy flapper, rouged and clipped, careening in a drunken stupor to the lewd strains of a jazz quartet."

The 1920s was the Jazz Age and one of the most popular past-times for flappers was dancing. Dances such as the Charleston, Black Bottom, and the Shimmy were considered "wild" by older generations.

As described in the May 1920 edition of the Atlantic Monthly, flappers "trot like foxes, limp like lame ducks, one-step like cripples, and all to the barbaric yawp of strange instruments which transform the whole scene into a moving-picture of a fancy ball in bedlam."

For the Younger Generation, the dances fit their fast-paced lifestyle.

For the first time since the train and the bicycle, a new form of faster transportation was becoming popular. Henry Ford's innovations were making the automobile an accessible commodity to the people.

Cars were fast and risky-perfect for the flapper attitude. Flappers not only insisted on riding in them; they drove them. Unfortunately for their parents, flappers didn't just use cars to ride in. The back seat became a popular location for the new popular sexual activity, petting. Others hosted petting parties.

Though their attire was modeled after little boys' outfits, flappers flaunted their sexuality. It was a radical change from their parents' and grandparents' generations.

While many were shocked by the flapper's skimpy attire and licentious behavior, a less extreme version of the flapper became respectable among the old and the young. Some women cut off their hair and stopped wearing their corsets, but didn't go to the extreme of flapperhood. In "A Flapper's Appeal to Parents," Ellen Welles Page said:

I wear bobbed hair, the badge of flapperhood. (And, oh, what a comfort it is!) I powder my nose. I wear fringed skirts and bright-colored sweaters, and scarfs, and waists with Peter Pan collars, and low-heeled "finale hopper" shoes. I adore to dance. I spend a large amount of time in automobiles. I attend hops, and proms, and ball-games, and crew races, and other affairs at men's colleges.

At the end of the 1920s, the stock market crashed and the world was plunged into the Great Depression. Frivolity and recklessness were forced to come to an end. However, much of the flapper's changes remained.

Allen, Frederick Lewis. Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the Nineteen-Twenties. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1931.

Andrist, Ralph K., ed. The American Heritage: History of the 20's & 30's. New York: American Heritage Publishing Co., Inc., 1970.

Baughman, Judith S., ed. American Decades: 1920-1929. New York: Manly, Inc., 1996.

Bliven, Bruce. "Flapper Jane." The New Republic 44 (Sept. 9, 1925): 65-67.

Douglas, George H. Women of the 20s. Saybrook Publishers, 1986.

Fass, Paula S. The Damned and the Beautiful: American Youth in the 1920's. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977.

Hall, G. Stanley. "Flapper Americana Novissima." Atlantic Monthly 129 (June 1922): 771-780.

Hatton, Jackie. "Flappers." St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture. 2000.

Page, Ellen Welles. "A Flapper's Appeal to Parents." Outlook 132 (Dec. 6, 1922): 607.

Saunders, W. O. "Me and My Flapper Daughters." The American Magazine 104 (Aug. 1927): 27, 121.

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Flappers in the Roaring Twenties: Not Their Mother's Gibson Girl

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In the 1920s, flappers-young women with new ideas about how to live-broke away from the Victorian image of womanhood. They dropped the corset, chopped their hair, dropped layers of clothing to increase ease of movement, wore make-up, created the concept of dating, and became a sexual person.

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"A New Woman Emerges"

by Louise Benner
Reprinted with permission from the Tar Heel Junior Historian. Spring 2004.
Tar Heel Junior Historian Association, NC Museum of History

A woman of 1920 would be surprised to know that she would be remembered as a "new woman." Many changes would enter her life in the next ten years. Significant changes for women took place in politics, the home, the workplace, and in education. Some were the results of laws passed, many resulted from newly developed technologies, and all had to do with changing attitudes toward the place of women in society.

The most far-reaching change was political. Many women believed that it was their right and duty to take a serious part in politics. They recognized, too, that political decisions affected their daily lives. When passed in 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment gave women the right to vote. Surprisingly, some women didn't want the vote. A widespread attitude was that women's roles and men's roles did not overlap. This idea of "separate spheres" held that women should concern themselves with home, children, and religion, while men took care of business and politics. North Carolina opponents of woman suffrage, or voting, claimed that "women are not the equal of men mentally" and being able to vote "would take them out of their proper sphere of life."

Though slow to use their newly won voting rights, by the end of the decade, women were represented on local, state, and national political committees and were influencing the political agenda of the federal government. More emphasis began to be put on social improvement, such as protective laws for child labor and prison reform. Women active in politics in 1929 still had little power, but they had begun the journey to actual political equality.

With regard to education, North Carolina's female high school students seldom expected to go to college. If they did, they usually attended a private college or Woman's College in Greensboro (now UNC-G), where there were no male students. Most of the Woman's College students became teachers or nurses, as these were considered suitable professions for women. North Carolina State College (now NCSU) enrolled its first woman student in 1921, but it was not until 1926 that N.C. State decreed, "A woman who completes work for a degree offered by the institution [can] be graduated." In 1928 only twenty-one women were enrolled there.

The University of North Carolina opened housing to female graduate students in 1921, but they were not made welcome. The student newspaper headlined, "Women Not Wanted Here." Few North Carolina women earned degrees during the 1920s. But times were changing, and each year more women earned college degrees.

At the beginning of the decade, most North Carolina women lived in rural areas without electricity. Imagine trying to keep food fresh without a refrigerator, ironing (no drip-dry clothing then) with an iron that had to be reheated constantly, cooking on a woodstove, going to an outside well for water, and always visiting an outhouse instead of a bathroom. Rural electrification did not reach many North Carolina homes until the 1940s.

Urban women found that electricity and plumbing made housework different, and often easier, with electrically run vacuum cleaners, irons, and washing machines. Electricity meant that people could stay up later at night, because electric lights were more efficient than kerosene lamps and candles. Indoor plumbing brought water inside and introduced a new room to clean-the bathroom.

In the United States in the 1920s, only about 15 percent of white and 30 percent of black married women with wage-earning husbands held paying jobs. Most Americans believed that women should not work outside the home if their husbands held jobs. As a result of this attitude, wives seldom worked at outside jobs. However, some married women in desperate need took jobs in textile mills.

By 1922 North Carolina was a leading manufacturing state, and the mills were hiring female floor workers. Cotton mills also employed a few nurses, teachers, and social workers to staff social and educational programs. These mills did not hire black women, however, because of segregation. As a consequence, white millworkers often hired black women as domestic and child-care workers. Fewer jobs were available in tobacco factories because most of their 1920s machinery was automated. The largest North Carolina tobacco manufacturers did employ both black and white women, but strictly separated workers by race and gender.

At the same time, public acceptance of wage-earning jobs for young unmarried women was growing. No longer being limited to work as "mill girls" or domestics, these women began to perform clerical work in offices and retail work in shops and department stores. It became acceptable for working girls to live away from their families. Some young married women worked until they had children. Working for wages gave women independence, and by 1930 one in four women held a paying job.

Despite increasing opportunities in employment and education, and the expanding concept of a "woman's place," marriage remained the goal of most young women. Magazine articles and movies encouraged women to believe that their economic security and social status depended on a successful marriage. The majority worked only until they married.

Working women became consumers of popular products and fashions. Women who would never tolerate the strong smells and stains of chewing tobacco or cigars began to smoke the new, and relatively clean, mild cigarettes. Cigarettes were advertised to women as a sign of modern sophistication, and the 1920s "flapper " is usually pictured with a cigarette in her hand.

Today the easily recognized image of the flapper symbolizes the 1920s for many people. The flapper-with her short skirts, short hair, noticeable makeup, and fun-loving attitude-represented a new freedom for women. The old restrictions on dress and behavior were being overthrown. Highly publicized flappers shortened their skirts, drank illegal alcohol, smoked, and otherwise defied society's expectations of proper conduct for young women.

Is this glamorous and rebellious image of the flapper a true representation of the 1920s woman? Not entirely. In order to be a flapper, a woman had to have enough money and free time to play the part. College girls, unmarried girls living at home, and independent office workers most frequently presented themselves as flappers. However, the average woman did wear the fashions made popular by flappers. As often happens, unconventional clothing was gradually integrated into fashion and adopted at all income levels. Sears, Roebuck, and Company claimed that nine million families made purchases from its catalogs in 1925. The clothing sold through catalogs was based on high-fashion styles from Paris.

Flappers popularized slender, boyish fashions. Figures were flattened with undergarments. Hemlines, straight or uneven, gradually crept up, and waistlines dropped. High-fashion evening wear in tubular, sleeveless styles featured beading and fringe. Day dresses copied the evening lines, if not the trims. Short skirts were complemented by flesh-colored stockings worn with decorative shoes. Hair was cut close to the head and covered outdoors by the close-fitting cloche hat. It became respectable to wear makeup. Between 1920 and 1930, women's appearance changed completely.

Women found their lives changed in more than appearance, however. Society now accepted that women could be independent and make choices for themselves in education, jobs, marital status, and careers. Women's spheres had broadened to include public as well as home life. The "new woman" was on her way.
At the time of this article's publication, Louise Benner worked as a curator of costume and textiles at the North Carolina Museum of History.

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"A New Woman Emerges" by Louise Benner Reprinted with permission from the Tar Heel Junior Historian. Spring 2004. Tar Heel Junior Historian Association, NC Museum of History A woman of 1920 would be surprised to know that she would be remembered as a "new woman."

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Women in the Roaring Twenties (Fall 2012) - Historpedia

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The Historpedia highlights research interests of students enrolled in PsTL 1251, Global History and Culture, at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. Students write short encyclopedia-like entries on history topics of high interest to them. They identify a major history force that influences the person, event, or group described in their paper.