DeepSummary
The episode discusses the historical arguments against giving women the right to vote, particularly from women themselves through organizations like the Women's Anti-Suffrage League. Some arguments included that women already had power in certain spheres like the home and family, and that enfranchisement would dilute this power. Others claimed politics was a man's domain involving potential violence that women were ill-suited for.
The guests analyze how some of these arguments, while flawed, revealed fears about disrupting gender roles and norms of the time. They also explore the movement's diverse membership, including intelligent and accomplished women, and how the suffragette campaign itself was sometimes portrayed as unladylike and militant.
While noting that giving women the vote ultimately did not radically upend society as feared, the guests discuss how variants of these arguments persisted, either opposing further women's rights advances or echoing in modern anti-feminist rhetoric about women's proper roles and unsuitability for public spheres like politics.
Key Episodes Takeaways
- The Women's Anti-Suffrage League and other groups in the early 20th century made various arguments against giving women the right to vote, including that it would dilute women's existing power in domestic spheres and that women were ill-suited for the potential violence of politics.
- Despite being espoused by some intelligent and accomplished women, these arguments revealed fears about disrupting traditional gender roles and norms.
- While enfranchisement did not radically upend society as predicted, variants of the anti-suffrage arguments persisted in opposition to further advances in women's rights and public participation.
- Modern anti-feminist rhetoric echoes these arguments in portraying women's equality and career participation as detracting from perceived more 'natural' roles like motherhood.
- There is persistent suspicion that even when women gain elite positions, it is tokenistic and they lack real power or influence.
- Historical anti-feminist arguments have morphed into different contemporary forms, revealing enduring tensions around women's societal roles.
- Women politicians like Margaret Thatcher navigated these tensions via cultivating a kind of 'iron femininity' image combining toughness with traditional feminine qualities.
- The persistence of anti-feminist rhetoric reveals enduring struggles in fully reconciling narratives of gender equality with persistent beliefs about innate differences between men and women.
Top Episodes Quotes
- “I mean, now, we'd probably think of it as the separate spheres argument or complementarity of the two ways that it gets described now. And it's the idea that men and women, women have different roles, different biology, different interests. And, you know, you can't turn women into kind of ersatz men, essentially.“ by Helen Lewis
- “It's also the case that Liz Truss was on board for the gender self idea version, the sort of Theresa May version, until she saw the light and wasn't. But as she's discovered in her attempt to reinvent herself as a kind of trumpy warrior who might go down well in the States, it's a totally different ballgame over there.“ by Helen Lewis
- “And it is also an anti feminist obsession in the sense that women are too busy having careers, and that means that they're not, you know, they don't want to have kids anymore.“ by David Runciman
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Episode Information
Past Present Future
Ben Walker
5/12/24
In this episode of our series on the lingering hold of bad ideas David talks to the writer and broadcaster Helen Lewis about the arguments made at the turn of the last century against giving the vote to women. Why were so many women against female enfranchisement? What did attitudes to women in politics reveal about the failings of men? And where can the echoes of these arguments still be heard today?
Helen Lewis’s Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights is available wherever you get your books https://bit.ly/3wp8DNX
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Next time on The History of Bad Ideas: Kathleen Stock discusses The Death of the Author.
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