Women as Municipal Candidates

Emily Davison — Thu, 02 Nov 1911 00:01:24 +0000

Thursday, Nov. 2, 1911, To the Editor of The Yorkshire Observer, “Women as Municipal

Candidates”

While women did not have the parliamentary franchise, they did have the vote in municipal

elections in which they could run for various offices—but the attention to economic

qualifications that underlay the extension of the parliamentary franchise in the various

nineteenth century reform acts slowly enfranchising men, worked to limit women’s public

service. Davison, no friend to the Liberal Government, nevertheless calls attention to a

speaker at a Women’s Liberal Association as offering a reasonable and needed exposition of

the problem women faced and a solution: qualification would be changed from an economic

(ratable) one to a residential one, thus allowing women who had no direct income of their

own to stand for election and to serve on boards in the boroughs in which they lived.

Sir, –In your issue of October 28 you mention the fact that there are very few women

standing as candidates for the municipal elections throughout the country this year, and

you remark, ‘Probably, as mentioned by our London Correspondent, many more women

would offer themselves as candidates but for the unsatisfactory state of the law.’

At a meeting of the Didsbury and Withington Women’s Liberal Association on

October 2 Miss Margaret Ashton explained why so small a number of women can serve

on local authorities. She said that ‘the right to sit upon Town and County Councils had been

given to women with one hand only to be taken away with the other.’ The real source of the

difficulty was, as she explained, that the qualification for such service was a ratable one,

which thus ruled out both wives and daughters who were living with their parents, and

only isolated women were eligible. Thus the number of women who were both suitable and

willing to serve on public bodies was very much limited. This restriction formerly held

good with regard to Boards of Guardians, and few women were able to qualify. The

qualification having been changed to a residential one, wives and daughters living at home

were able to serve, and there is no dearth of suitable and useful women candidates as

Guardians. In fact, the number of such was multiplied by five in a single year. At this

meeting, as a result of Miss Ashton’s admirable exposition, a resolution was passed

unanimously urging the Government to give facilities for a Bill putting the right to sit on

Town and County Councils on a residential instead of a ratable qualification. I am, &c.

EMILY WILDING DAVISON

31, Coram Street, London, W.C., October 31

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Women as Municipal Candidates