The Incredible Woman – Confronting the challenges, forward to the future

I was proud to attend this public lecture last Wednesday, hosted by Professor Jocelynne Scutt. The lecture was billed: 

2018 is the centenary of (some) women winning the vote. Women over 30 with property, husbands with property, or a university degree were allowed to vote alongside all men of 21 years who had the vote. Ten years later, all women of 21 years and over at last gained the vote. The struggle was enormous, and extended into all areas of the polity – demands for equal pay, representation on juries, the right for married women to own their own property, the right to bodily and psychic integrity – and even the right to be recognised as ‘persons’.

Today’s women sit in Parliament and Councils, head government and university departments, lead corporations and countries. How have these changes come about, and how far is there to go? ‘The Incredible Woman’, a film by Karen Buczynski-Lee and Jocelynne A. Scutt tells the story through narrative and archival footage of women’s demand to be recognised as human, building on Mary Wollstonecraft’s message in her ‘Vindication of the Rights of Woman’. Then follows a panel discussion with Lisa Collins, Buckingham journalism graduate, Anita Maxatzo, a Xhosa woman from South Africa, and Dr Susan Edwards of the University’s Law School, with lots of opportunity for discussion, debate, questions and exploration of where women are, and what the future holds.

It was great to be there and learn more about the role that Buckinghamshire played in the women's suffrage movement (see "Burning to Get the Vote: The Women's Suffrage Movement in Central Buckinghamshire, 1904-1914" by Rev. Colin Cartwright)

The whole panel and Professors Scutt & Edwards combining and coordinating on the Suffragette colours!