BREAKING THE GLASS CEILING

The Edwardian era saw countless courageous women rise up and shatter social mores - at home, at work and in public life

- ELINOR EVANS

"I am here as a soldier who has temporarily left the field of battle in order to explain - it seems strange it should have to be explained - what civil war is like when civil war is waged by women." These words, spoken by prominent women's suffrage campaigner Emmeline Pankhurst in 1913 to an audience in the US state of Connecticut, describe the fight that many women took up during the early years of the 20th century. In her now-infamous 'Freedom or death' speech, Pankhurst spoke of the numerous hardships suffered by imprisoned women and the torture endured by campaigners who chose to go on hunger strike. Her name (along with her daughters Sylvia and Christabel) endures as one of the most famous of the Edwardian era.

Though by no means the first in Britain's history to campaign for the vote, societies like the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) - founded in 1903 and whose militant members were nicknamed 'suffragettes' by the Daily Mail in 1906 took on new momentum in the period. The rapid urbanisation of the 19th-century Industrial Revolution had brought welcome changes for many women, giving them a wider range of opportunities to earn a wage. But it also came with hardship, with most women still expected to marry, maintain homes and manage families, many with multiple children (ideas of birth control would not be discussed more openly until near the end of the period).