History at key stage 3 (Year 8/9)
Unit 16: The franchise why did it take so much longer for British women to get the vote?
Section 7: Why did women gain the vote in 1918 and not before?
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Objectives |
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- about the role that women in Britain played during the First World War
- to analyse and evaluate the impact of women's war work on political, social and cultural attitudes
- to evaluate the changes in franchise in 1918 and 1928 as they affected men and women
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Activities |
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Outcomes |
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Children: |
- Using video clips, visual sources, suitable websites or overhead transparencies of visual sources, give pupils an overview of women's war work.
- Ask pupils to annotate a poster encouraging women to take part in the war effort, with reference to (i) the propaganda devices used; (ii) the values and attitudes revealed by the poster.
- Ask pupils to think back to work at the start of the enquiry on 'freedom' and 'responsibility'. Ask pupils to speculate about how established attitudes to women might now change.
- Direct pupils to sources of information on legislation in 1918 and 1928. Ask them to (i) note how it affected women and men; (ii) list the reasons why this happened when it did.
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- annotate a poster encouraging women to join the war effort with reference to (i) the propaganda devices used; (ii) the values and attitudes revealed by the poster
- suggest reasons why women's war work shifted attitudes to female suffrage
- explain causes and consequences of suffrage legislation in 1918 and 1928
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Points to note |
- A wide variety of posters encouraging women to take part in the war effort exist in many collections, the most accessible of which, by personal visit or mail order, is probably housed in the Imperial War Museum, London.
- Teachers may like to extend this activity to a consideration of the reasons why many prominent individuals,
eg Herbert Asquith, changed their minds on the subject of female franchise.
- ICT: pupils could create a spreadsheet using quantitative data on the changing range of women's occupations by 1918. They could analyse the data and produce graphs of trends.
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This unit is divided into sections. Each section contains a sequence of
activities with related objectives and outcomes. You can view this unit by
moving through the sections or print/download the whole unit.
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