2018 WORKSHOP: The Agency of Korean Women

The BAKS Council celebrates the centenary of the expansion of suffrage to British women in 1918 by taking up the workshop theme of ‘The Agency of Korean Women’. The enfranchised UK electorate expanded from 7.7 million in 1912 to 21.4 million in 1918. Men benefited as well from the Representation of the People Act, because it extended suffrage to all men of 21 and older, while enfranchising women of 30 and older who owned property. Clearly, the advancement of women’s rights had the advantage of carrying men along in its wake. In 1928 all women 21 and older, with or without property, were enfranchised. As the suffragette movement and more recent feminist movements have shown, the enlargement of political, economic, and legal rights to females has not been a gift to women but has been fought for and won as a major expansion of the freedoms that underlie liberal democracies.

 

Programme