Vote 100

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Representation of the People Act, GWL is developing an animated web resource highlighting the forgotten heroines who have campaigned for women across the world to have the right to vote.

Lin Zongsu

Lin Zongsu was a Chinese suffragist and writer who founded the first women’s suffrage organisation in China.

Concepción Felix de Calderón

Concepción Felix de Calderon was born in the Philippines in 1884 and founded the Feminist Association of the Philippines in 1905.

Qiu Jin

Qiu Jin was a Chinese revolutionary feminist and poet who was known as China’s Joan of Arc.

Sojourner Truth

At a meeting of women’s rights activists the noise from heckling clergymen was so bad that no one could quieten them. Then Sojourner Truth spoke out: ‘Ain’t I a Woman?’ By the time she finished, the disrespect had turned to a roar of approval.

Catherine Hogg-Blair

Catherine Hogg-Blair was a Suffragette from East Lothian whose farm was a secret refuge for Scottish suffragettes who had been released from prison under the Cat and Mouse Act.

Doria Shafik

Doria Shafik was one of the principal leaders of the women’s liberation movement in Egypt in the mid-1940s. She founded an Egyptian feminist organization called The Daughters of The Nile, dedicated to educating and organizing working women of all classes.

Frances McPhun

Frances McPhun graduated with an MA in Political Economy from Glasgow University, where she and her sister Margaret were members of the University’s suffrage union. Arrested for smashing windows in London, they went on hunger strike in Holloway Prison.

Hatoon Ajwad al-Fassi

Hatoon Ajwad al-Fassi is a women’s rights activist and an associate professor of women’s history at King Saud University in Saudi Arabia.

Annot Wilkie

Annot Wilkie was the Dundee organiser for the WSPU, but later left and became a suffragist, joining the NUWSS.

Alice Crompton

Alice Crompton was a Suffragette, originally from Manchester, who campaigned all over Scotland, from Fife to Stornoway.