- Give pupils accounts of three women who struggled against inequality or injustice. Choose three contrasting women from different parts of the period,
eg Harriet Taylor, Josephine Butler and Emmeline Pankhurst.
- Provide pupils with a grid for analysing the three women's struggles under three headings:
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What were they struggling for?
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What methods did they use in their struggle?
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Why do we not have to struggle for this today?
- Introduce the 'big question' for the whole unit Why did it take so much longer for British women to get the vote? Tell pupils that women did not get the vote until 1918-28. Carry out mini-voting activity about a classroom matter, but exclude one section of the group for an arbitrary reason, in order to emphasise the impact of exclusion from franchise.
- Begin to explain and emphasise the teaching point, by introducing pupils to nineteenth-century views on public and private spheres of activity.
- Use a large Venn diagram and give pupils a list of activities to position in the circles which should be labelled public sphere and private sphere,
eg making laws, declaring war, looking after children, etc.
- Talk about which activities pupils have put in each sphere and tell pupils that Victorians regarded the private sphere as being the proper business of women and the public sphere that of men. Refer to the 'Angel in the House' model.
- Brainstorm why and how this attitude inhibited women's progress toward national suffrage.
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- analyse three nineteenth-century/early twentieth-century women's struggles according to purpose, method, and compare with today
- demonstrate knowledge of Victorian private and public spheres of activity by deploying information correctly in a Venn diagram
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