Rethinking the history of the English feminism: the suffragists’ neutral position on education reform and the repeal of the contagious diseases acts 1850-1886

Abstract EN

This study aims to assert that the women’s suffrage movement in nineteenth-century Britain does not merit the scholarly attention it received from historians of the post-1850 feminist movement.

while it is true that the suffrage advocates made much effort to enfranchise women, they were, however, entirely absent from the wider feminist campaigns for girls’ education and the reform of laws on prostitution.

so, it might be inferred that the ‘woman question’ was not solely confined to the struggle for gaining women the right to vote, but it spoke fundamental questions concerning women’s right to education and the rejection of the cultural and historical assumptions about sexuality which combined to limit working-class prostitutes’ human rights.