BBC News School Report @ LCS

There've been many displays in schools to raise awareness for this milestone, such as this one in lttleover community school.

2018 marks 100 years since the suffragettes were successful with their campaign and gained the right for women over the age of the 30 to vote. Emily Goddard and Josie Cox are two women that were key in this event happening but there are so many unrecognised women today that deserve to be written about:

1. 1. Jennifer Lawrence, Beyoncé, Emma Watson, Gwyneth Paltrow and many more women have spoken up about this issue which helps women across the nation know that they have a voice and encourages them to have a say.
2. 2. Rosa Parks - lived in Montgomery, Alabama, USA during the time when black people couldn’t do the same things as white such as using the same shops, cafés, toilets and even benches. On the 1st December 1955, she decided to sit in the white section of the bus and after being asked to move by the bus driver, she refused. Even though not a big thing, it made a huge impact on how people live their lives today
3. 3. Sophie Scholl - she was one of the leaders of the White Rose Campaign (opposing Hitler), but when handing out leaflets, she was caught and found guilty of treason. In court she spoke out when not asked and was executed at 21
4. 4. Irena Sendler - helped save 2,500 Jewish children from the Nazi ghetto and extermination in the death camps
5. 5. Dorothy Hodgkin - Britain’s only female Nobel Prize winner for science for her discovery of the molecular structure of steroids and insulin. This discovery helped save many people with diabetis

It also marks the year when men over the age of 21 could vote however it wasn’t until 1928 (10 years later) that the age lowered to 21 for women as well. Another 41 years down the line and the voting age lowered once again allowing anyone over the age of 18 to vote.

A key person in the suffragette’s campaign was Emily Davison - she was so determined for everything to be fair that she gave her own life to the campaign. Previously, she’d been arrested 9 times, went on a hunger strike 7 times and was force-fed 49 times in order to gain some sort of recognition for their campaign. When nothing else was working, Emily decided enough was enough and created a plan to walk onto the track where a Derby (horse racing) was happening in 1913 to see if anyone would notice, but no-one did (apart from the other suffragettes placed around the track). This however is the most developed theory even though not proved yet.

Emily was hit by King George V’s horse and was killed; she knew that this would be the end result but knew that this had to be done. Her funeral on 14th June 1913 was organised by the union; a procession of 5,000 suffragettes accompanied her coffin with 50,000 lining the route through London. This event brought lots of attention from other countries which in a way pressured Britain to allow women to vote - even though this happened 5 years later.

Across the country in Manchester, Bristol, Sheffield, Oxford, Derby, Leicester, Birmingham, London and many more, there are lots of discussions, parades, workshops, exhibitions, screenings and more going on to help raise awareness of this event and to inform everyone on the events of what happened. In London, there will be a panel discussion on whether violence helped win rights or not and in Derby you can go to the Women Making History bi-monthly lecture series for free.

Something that’s still going on is the unfair gender-based pay gap, where women are still receiving less than men. Recently, the BBC released some of their employees’ salaries showing a sizeable gap between those of men compared to women. Chris Evans (the BBC’s best-paid star) collects at least £2.2 million a year while Claudia Winkleman (the best paid

female star) receives around £475,000 a year - this is almost a fifth of what Evans is paid. Even though the equal pay rule was introduced in 1970, there’s still a gender imbalance which needs to be addressed.

Jennifer Lawrence, Beyoncé, Emma Watson, Gwyneth Paltrow and many more women have spoken up about this issue which helps women across the nation know that they have a voice and encourages them to have a say.