London, 2017.
For all underground movements, this is the moment
to step into the light and confront the government.
For too long, millions of women have fought
to finally obtain the right to vote.
Born in the 19th century, the movement for the women's
right to vote was immediately resisted.
Repression was brutal.
With its back to the wall,
confronted by the obstinacy of government,
the movement gradually became radicalized,
descending into violence and then terrorism.
Today the situation is a total stalemate.
Each side is entrenched in its position.
The country is on the verge of civil war.
But none of this ever happened.
At the beginning of the 20th century,
voices will be raised to fight injustice
and obtain the right to vote for women.
Our history is no more than a series of incredible events.
Every one of us can influence its course.
The most infinitesimal of our decisions
can influence the future of humanity.
To know the past is to foresee the future.
1897, London.
Millicent Garrett Fawcett founds the National Union
of Women's Suffrage Societies.
November 18, 1910, a demonstration for the right to vote
for women is violently suppressed by the police.
February 1918, Parliament passes
the Representation of the People Act.
More than eight million British women
have won the right to vote.
These three intimately related events
are the key moments in the struggle
for British women's right to vote
and are part of the long history of women's emancipation.
Paris, it's a hot summer day and the governor
of the Royal Prison has no idea what to do.
Ever since morning increasing numbers of rioters
have laid siege to his fortress.
It's July 14, 1789 and the French Revolution is underway.
The Bastille is about to fall.
The wave of revolution carries all in its path.
Before the end of the summer, the major principles
of liberty have been set out in a charter.
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of The Citizen.
All men are born free and equal in rights.
With this sentence, the revolutionaries swept away
the old regime and established a new social order.
Here the word men means humanity, men and women,
rich and poor, great and small, all obtain the same rights.
However, very quickly, women, despite having paid in blood
for the revolution are largely excluded
from this new world of equality.
This pushing aside of women is far from being
an isolated case in the long history of humanity.
When we study ancient civilizations,
one permanent feature stands out clearly.
Women appear to have very often been considered
as inferior in rights to men.
In Sparta, they were given a good sports education
so they would produce strong children.
In early Rome, the paterfamilias had the right
of life or death over his family.
In almost all cases, wives were legally dependent
on their husbands, daughters on their fathers.
Occasionally they had the right to own their own property
and take part in public life.
Often a battery of laws protected them from abuse,
but reduced their movements and their liberties.
Almost systematically they were considered as inseparable
from the home, the family and children.
For thousands of years, one half of humanity
ruled over the other.
With the coming of the French Revolution,
a fresh wind blows across the nation.
But rapidly stripped of their political rights,
certain women took the stage.
Olympe De Gouges, a woman of letters,
publishes a declaration of the rights of the woman
and the female citizen and makes a plea
for equality of rights between all citizens
irrespective of sex, color, or income.
However, these ideas will disappear with her
in the world of revolution.
Welcome to the memory of humanity.
Here we can control time, analyze and compare
billions of events and alter them
to rewrite history endlessly.
All the events in our history, however minute they might be
are memorized and interconnected.
It only requires one to be changed for all the others
to be shaken to the core.
In the Paleolithic Age, the woman is associated
with the earth, nurturing and fertile.
Today we can find numerous statues from the period
that represent a goddess mother.
However it would appear that with the development
of agriculture, the relationship of man with nature changed.
Nature is exploited, controlled, dominated.
For the woman, the symbol of nature,
this perhaps constitutes a key moment.
She loses her aura in favor of a world
that is more controlled, obedient to man.
Slowly other more masculine divinities appear.
For century after century, in societies that are
in a great majority patriarchal,
the man has claimed the public arena for himself,
leading the clan, hunting, war.
The woman has inherited the private space.
The home has become both her realm and her prison.
[Narrator] 1837, London, heart and soul
of the British empire.
Queen Victoria has just succeeded to the throne.
The Royal Navy rules the waves.
British industry is in full revolution.
This is a Victorian era.
However, all is not perfect.
Those in power fully intend to remain there.
To achieve this, the best way is to limit the power
of the lower classes
by restricting their access to elections.
Actually the British kingdom is a constitutional monarchy,
Which means that although the king or queen
is indeed the head of state, real power lies
in the hands of a government and a parliament.
Therefore, in principle all citizens have the right to vote
to elect their representatives.
However, this right to vote, or suffrage,
is subject to conditions.
One must be a property owner, that is a British subject,
and pays more than 10 pounds in tax per year.
Defacto, this excludes the lower classes.
But that's not all.
To vote, you must also be a man.
Women are not considered fit to vote.
So Victorian England is swept by a wind of social protest.
Movements that mobilize millions of people
are trying to impose universal suffrage.
Little by little, the government concedes ground.
More and more men obtain the right to vote.
Women are not there yet.
In 1860, women have no more rights than a criminal,
a child, or the mentally ill.
It is during this period that the first suffragist
organizations appear campaigning
for the right to vote for women.
In 1869 women paying taxes obtain the right
to take part in municipal elections.
In 1894, this right is extended to all married women.
1897 is a major turning point.
The various associations, until then isolated,
joined together to form
the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies,
or NUWSS.
Its president, Millicent Garrett Fawcett.
Its aim, to obtain, through constitutional struggle,
the same civic rights as men.
The great battle is beginning.
[Announcer] Universal suffrage.
In the 19th century, Great Britain actually only grants
the right to vote to a tiny portion of the population,
wealthy men.
The Athenian democracy applied the same restrictions
and only a tiny minority of inhabitants
saw their opinions taken into account.
In France, the French Revolution advocated
equality for all,
yet from 1791 women were excluded
from elections up until 1944.
The first republic to clearly set out the right to vote
for women is Pasquale Paoli's Corsican Republic of 1755.
Based on universal suffrage, it is often considered
to be the first democratic constitution in modern history.
But it will only last some 15 years.
These advances will disappear at the same time
as the island's independence when it is annexed by
the kingdom of France.
Let's continue.
[Narrator] June 5, 1900, South Africa.
British colonial forces march into Pretoria,
capital of the Transvaal.
The origin of this conflict, the refusal by the government
of the Transvaal to grant the right to vote to the many
British immigrants who are flooding into its territory.
Thousands of miles from its capital, the British army
has thus flouted the sovereign rights of a state,
in order to impose the right to vote for its own nationals.
For British women, this is a dazzling revelation.
Quite visibly, a law that you consider to be unjust,
can be fought even by force.
There's a long road ahead.
Anti-suffragists put forward the argument
that the majority of women quite simply do not want
the right to vote.
Queen Victoria herself is a fierce opponent.
They consider women too unstable
in their political opinions, swayed by their emotions
and not by their reason.
The struggle bogs down.
The suffragists from the National Union of Women's
Suffrage Societies, despite some minor victories,
are unable to push things forward.
In 1903 several of its members quit the organization
in disappointment and found
the Women's Social and Political Union, the WSPU.
The brains of the organization, Emmeline Pankhurst.
Her war cry, deeds not words, her tactic, direct action.
A name is very quickly found to distinguish them
from the suffragists, the suffragettes.
Two organizations, two strategies, one common aim,
the right to vote for women.
Things soon pick up pace.
In 1905, two members of the WSPU movement shout
suffragette slogans.
The police arrive, the suffragettes resist,
refuse to move on and end up fighting
with the forces of law and order.
The two activists are thrown into jail.
The tone is set.
Women are no longer weak and submissive.
Encouraged by this publicity's success,
the WSPU intensifies its actions.
Disturbing meetings, protests, hounding ministers
who no longer dare leave their homes.
In 1907, 3000 women march across London in the rain.
It's the Mud March.
If women are not considered to be citizens,
some decide they will no longer pay their taxes.
Emmeline Pankhurst declares, "We are here not because
we are law breakers, we are here in our efforts
to become law makers."
The movement hardens, an avalanche of arrests follow.
In 1909, prisoners start a series of hunger strikes.
The government's response is swift.
The suffragettes are force-fed through a long tube
pushed down their throats.
On November 18, 1910, 300 members of the WSPU
take to the streets to protest.
The police react with a heavy hand.
119 persons are arrested.
The protestors are beaten.
The police turn a blind eye to the violence
and groping inflicted on the women.
One badly beaten dies of her injuries.
Then groups of suffragettes start
smashing shop windows with hammers.
They burn houses, churches.
Slowly the WSPU loses public support.
The word terrorism starts to be applied.
The following year the police take over
the suffragettes headquarters.
Its leaders are in jail, or in exile.
The movement becomes increasingly underground.
The situation is a total deadlock.
How could Parliament give way in the face of violent acts?
How could the Suffragettes retreat?
The violence reaches its climax in 1913 during the
Epsom Derby horse race.
Activist Emily Wilding Davison tries to attract attention.
In the middle of the race, as the cameras turn,
she crosses the barrier and stands in front
of the King's horse.
Galloping at full speed, the jockey cannot avoid her.
The suffragette will not survive.
[Announcer] Civil disobedience.
A term created in 1849, the concept dates back however
to the ius resistandi, a Roman law, the right of resistance.
When revolt opposes violence with violence,
then civil disobedience is more subtle.
In reality the power of the state rests entirely
upon the cooperation of its population.
If the people refuse to obey, the state no longer has power.
Furthermore, for it to work, it requires
a sufficiently large portion of the population
to follow the movement.
One indispensable condition, leaders must be ready
to take every risk to set the example
and take the crowd with them.
Such was the case with Gandhi, Martin Luther King
or Nelson Mandela.
Their action was more effective than that
of any terrorist group.
Violence breeds violence.
[Narrator] 1914, World War I.
Faced with the German threat, the nation closes ranks.
The suffragette prisoners are pardoned.
For a while the suffragist organizations
forget their demands.
In the factories, women replace en masse
the 2 million men gone to the front.
Suffragettes become munitionettes.
Work, hitherto the domain of men, is now given to women.
It is realized that they do the job equally well,
for wages that are always substantially lower.
Then the first combatants return home.
They lived through the horror,
the total butchery of trench warfare.
Now not one of them fulfills the conditions
essential for the right to vote,
having resided on British soil for the twelve months
prior to an election.
Impossible for the government to forbid them from voting,
if a man is obliged to lay down his life for his country,
the least the country can do
is allow him to express his opinion.
The system has to be revised.
For the suffragists, its a now or never opportunity.
If it means changing the laws, we may as well pose
the wider question of electoral reform to include women.
But despite the war, opponents drag things out,
barring women from the debates.
The arrival of Lloyd George, who was in favor
of votes for women, at the head of government
tilts the balance.
On January 10, 1918, reluctantly the proposition
for the right to vote for women is added to the bill.
On February 6, 1918 the Representation of the People Act
is passed.
Millions of new voters are entered on the electoral roles,
including more than 8 million women.
This law, imperfect because it excludes women
who don't own property or are under 30,
is nevertheless very concrete.
10 years later the law will be extended to all other women.
British women have finally become citizens.
[Announcer] A turning point is a key event,
a crossroads in our history where the world swings
one way or the other.
In many episodes of our history it's very easy
to identify them.
For example, what would have happened if Julius Caesar
had never been born?
But sometimes they are impossible to determine.
No event seems to have been the keystone in the struggle
for the right to vote for women, no person appears
by herself to have swung the balance one way or another.
And the reason is simple.
The underlying movement was carried not by one,
but by an incredible number of women
on all continents and over centuries.
From Olympe de Gouges to the unknown textile worker
in the north of England who becomes a suffragette,
all contributed closely or at a distance
to the long battle for their emancipation.
Therefore, there is not one turning point
but a multitude.
[Narrator] The United Kingdom is the eighth country
in the world to have granted women the right to vote.
The first was New Zealand in 1893.
In France, the land of the rights of man,
they did not obtain that right til the end
of the second World War in 1944.
In Saudi Arabia, they had to wait until 2015.
The right to vote is a fundamental first step
but it doesn't mean that legal equality is total.
They still have to obtain the right to stand
in an election, the right to dispose of their property
as they see fit, to marry and divorce freely,
to work, to dispose of their bodies, and much more.
The suffragette movement was only the first wave
in a ground swell that will resurface in the 60s and 70s
in particular with the sexual revolution.
Then women campaign more for their private rights
than their public.
Choose their sexuality, choose to marry or not,
only have children if they so wish.
It's the hour of liberty on the contraceptive pill.
Since the 80s the debate becomes one of feminism
in the age of the internet and globalization.
After years of struggle, feminism is sometimes viewed today
as a rear-guard action, no longer useful.
And yet even in the most open and tolerant of democracies,
in our day still, the status of women is generally
inferior to that of men.
One day perhaps, we may be able to say
that this injustice is ancient history.
But that is another story.
[Announcer] We are all different.
Equality can only be an objective, an ideal.
That which is to be sought is above all, equity.
Equity takes into account the respective needs of each,
whatever the sex, color of skin, or wealth,
the aim is to grant all an equivalent treatment
in terms of rights,
advantages, obligations or possibilities.
Giving more to those who have less,
equity between men and women is still far from perfect.
In many countries women still don't have
the right to divorce or abortion.
In the majority of countries they continue
to earn less than men for equal work.
There's a long road ahead.
The battle is far from over.
But fortunately throughout the world many people,
women and men, have taken up the suffragist's torch
to ensure that one day
we will all have the same opportunities.