SUFFRAGETTE 11/11/15

The struggle for the right of women to vote is an international one and the bruising fight continues to this day. The 19th Amendment to the US Constitution: Women’s Right To Vote was ratified in August 18, 1920 after decades of civil disobedience, strife, marching, humiliation, hunger strikes and incarceration -  a battle with simple but enormously important consequences - the necessity  for women to have a voice in who represents them in making the laws of the land and how those laws which often affects a woman’s life are interpreted. Without the vote, we are ignored, invisible and betrayed. Here is a link to a Library of Congress’ paper Why Women Should Vote written sometime after 1896 by  Alice Stone Blackwell giving 16 compelling and poignant reasons why women should vote - as relevant today as ever:

http://tinyurl.com/l3hbvf4

SUFFRAGETTE directed by Sarah Gavron focuses on a group of both working class and wealthy British women in 1912 whose ideologies and wretched situations at home  propel them to risk jobs and marriages in order to crack the male shell of resistance to the idea of women’s equality. Led by Emmeline Pankhurst, (a cameo performance by Meryl Streep) who in 1903 founded the more militant Women’s Social And Political Union (WSPU) - participating in demonstrations and hunger strikes where she herself was violently force-fed - acts that contributed to her mystique and the adoration of her followers. The bleak ambience of SUFFRAGETTES characterizes with historical accuracy the streets of London, the  wardrobes, and homes of women in different socio-economic groups, just before the advent of World War I - a time when women were more expendable and vulnerable to their male bosses; wages were a mere pittance and escape, a mirage. Husbands had absolute control over wives and children - both through physical abuse and the power of the British legal system. 

Films distort by the very nature of their structural limitations which are usually 2 hours. In that compressed amount of time and  a director’s subjective view of history, we follow the political radicalization of a laundress who labors under deplorable conditions (having begun as a mere child) named  Maud Watts (an actual composite of a suffragette named Hannah Mitchell - http://www.biography.com/news/suffragette-movie-history) beautifully played by Carey Mulligan, coming to the realization that she has no legal recourse over her detestable working environment, and in her personal world no claim over the welfare and future of her child. Maud comes to the conclusion, along with a group of fellow activists after hearing Mrs. Pankhurst speak, that years of peaceful protests had not altered their situations; shocks of violence were the only means of getting the attention of the government controlled Press and Parliament. The consequences of  these menacing actions are woven into the film’s drama. The wonderful actor Brendon Gleeson plays an Inspector Jarvert-type police official who is relentless in the prosecution and strategy of dealing with political “agitators” personifying the authority of the British legal system which enveloped ALL women who were subjugated to the daily slog of male dominance vitiating their every breath.

SUFFRAGETTE is not a great film, but the  inequities that befall the heroine and her “co-conspirators” made me fiercely conscious of society’s injustice to those who are seen as  defenseless. I was overcome by the overwhelming powerless of an individual to enact change without organizational support. Transformation is possible where there is courage and the remaining choices have been eliminated - when one is caged there are few alternatives other than shattering the bars.

At the very end of the movie there is  a timeline listing when women got the right to vote and the list was astonishing. There are many country's that in 2015  still do not grant women that right such as Saudi Arabia where it is still pending!!!!

Timeline of Women’s Suffrage Granted, by Country

1893 New Zealand

1902 Australia1

1906 Finland

1913 Norway

1915 Denmark

1917 Canada2

1918 Austria, Germany, Poland, Russia

1919 Netherlands

1920 United States

1921 Sweden

1928 Britain, Ireland

1931 Spain

1934 Turkey

1944 France

1945 Italy

1947 Argentina, Japan, Mexico, Pakistan

1949 China

1950 India

1954 Colombia

1957 Malaysia, Zimbabwe

1962 Algeria

1963 Iran, Morocco

1964 Libya

1967 Ecuador

1971 Switzerland

1972 Bangladesh

1974 Jordan

1976 Portugal

1989 Namibia

1990 Western Samoa

1993 Kazakhstan, Moldova

1994 South Africa

2005 Kuwait

2006 United Arab Emirates

2011 Saudi Arabia3

NOTE: One country does not allow their people, male or female, to vote: Brunei.

1. Australian women, with the exception of aboriginal women, won the vote in 1902. Aborigines, male and female, did not have the right to vote until 1962.

2. Canadian women, with the exception of Canadian Indian women, won the vote in 1917. Canadian Indians, male and female, did not win the vote until 1960. Source: The New York Times, May 22, 2005.

3. Women in Saudi Arabia will not be eligible to vote until 2015.