An echo in France of the British women’s suffrage campaign

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ABSTRACT The reputation of the suffragettes and the Pankhurst family in France was often considered to be too militant for the French journal La Française. This feminist journal praised the suffragettes whilst keeping a distance from such ‘trouble-makers’. This was a complex acceptance. In particular, from 1912, when some suffragettes engaged in violent tactics, the journal began calling for non-violent actions. After the Representation of the People Act was passed in 1918, La Francaise waited ten months to rejoice in this news. Now it began to suggest that British women were showing French women how to win their own enfranchisement, which was not granted until 1944. A few weeks before the 1928 Equal Franchise Act, the journal praised more and more Emmeline Pankhurst's radical spirit. This article suggests that the British suffragette movement had an influence on the women’s suffrage campaign in France although often in complex and contradictory ways.