Emmeline Pankhurst Speech

Emmeline Pankhurst was a British political activist and a leader of the British suffrage movement; a movement that helped women win the right to vote. Since 1848 women wanted to recognize their own rights and started the Women 's Rights Movement. The movement was protesting against the fact that women were not afforded the same rights as men. Since women were excluded from the political government, they pressured the government to grant them political rights. As part of the movement, in 1913, Pankhurst carried her appeal to the United States, where she delivered her famous speech Why Are We Militant. Therein, she expressed her ideas about women 's suffrage. She gave a talk to encourage American men and women to give political rights to women. In her speech, she states that both men and women are created equal and as a result of this equality women should have political rights too. Throughout her speech she emphasizes the discrimination against women, using the right to vote, the roles in marriage, and unequal wages as her evidence.

Pankhurst emphasized how women never had the right to vote. In her speech, she mentions two women that challenged Liberal Leader Sir Edward Grey by asking, "When are you

Furthermore, there were unequal wages between men and women. Even though women were able to work, they were not fully able to experience it because of the low pay they received. Often, this discouraged women from working or being ambitious about their future. Pankhurst questions, "How is it, the, that some of you have nothing but ridicule and contempt and [condemnation] for women who are fighting for exactly the same thing? In other words, men are sympathetic to women in other countries, but are not sympathetic to women in their own country. Men are more concerned about the issues in other countries ignoring the current problems at home. Women are not receiving their full rights; even with a women 's ability to work, there are still limits on her importance in