THE Chancellor will announce in the Budget a new £5 million fund to help mark next year’s centenary of the first British women to get the vote.
The 1918 Representation of the People Act gave some women the vote for the first time and paved the way for the introduction of universal suffrage ten years later, which saw women win equal voting rights to men.
The announcement coincides with International Women’s Day.
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Philip Hammond said: “It is important that we not only celebrate next year’s Centenary but also that we educate young people about its significance. It was the decisive step in the political emancipation of women in this country and this money will go to projects to mark its significance and remind us all just how important it was.”
Sarah Champion for Labour welcomed the announcement, saying it is right that the achievements of so many women who risked their homes, families and freedom to fight for democracy and economic equality will be celebrated.
But she noted how 99 years on, women were still having to fight for economic equality under the Conservative Government.
“From cuts to universal credit and 54,000 women losing their jobs through maternity discrimination, to the treatment of thousands of women born in the 1950s who have been left with a crisis in their retirement planning, this government is systematically turning back the clock on gender economic equality,” declared the Shadow Secretary for Women and Equalities.
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Meantime, more than 5,000 women are expected to protest outside Westminster to demand an end to state pension inequality as part of the Women Against State Pension Inequality or WASPI campaign.
It now has more than 60,000 active members, representing 2.6 million women born in the 1950s, who, the campaign insists, have been unfairly affected by increases to their state pension age.
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