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