Eleanor Rathbone (1872-1946) was one of the first female members of the British Parliament who used her position to push for gender-equal legislation.
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Hello! From Wonder Media Network, I’m Jenny Kaplan. And this is Encyclopedia Womannica.
Today, we’re talking about one of the first female members of the British Parliament who used her position to push for gender-equal legislation. Please welcome Eleanor Rathbone.
Eleanor was born in London on May 12, 1872. From a young age, she grew up in the world of politics. Her father, William, was a Liberal member of Parliament and often entertained other politicians and intellectuals.
In 1893, at the age of 21, Eleanor left home to study at Somerville College, Oxford. There, she studied Classics and was allegedly nicknamed “The Philosopher” by her peers. When Eleanor realized Somerville refused to give degrees to female students, she took matters into her own hands. She joined a group of women called the “Steamboat Ladies,” who sailed to Dublin to get honorary degrees from Trinity College.
After graduating, Eleanor worked alongside her father investigating the working conditions of industrial Liverpool. After his death, Eleanor continued her work in the city. She volunteered for the Liverpool Central Relief Society, where she dedicated her time to helping families in poverty improve and change their living conditions.
In the 1890s, Eleanor became a supporter of the women's rights movement, which she saw as integral to widespread social reform. In 1895, she was appointed secretary of the Liverpool Women’s Suffrage Society as well as the Women’s Industrial Council. Eleanor didn’t agree with radical tactics to promote women’s suffrage, and instead pushed a more moderate approach.
In 1906, the Liverpool City Council opened its elected positions to women. In 1909, Eleanor ran and was elected as an Independent candidate, a position she held until 1935. In 1913, she co-founded the Liverpool Women Citizen’s Organization to promote the involvement of women in politics.
When World War I broke out, Eleanor organized an association to help wives and other dependents., She continued that work when soldiers returned home. She saw that mothers were struggling to provide for families, and advocated for the installment of a family wage system. This method would pay family allowances directly to mothers, helping them to support their children and simultaneously fighting against the notion that men had to be breadwinners.
In 1918, at the end of World War I, British women over the age of 30 got the right to vote. That same year, Eleanor established the “1918 Club.” The following year, Eleanor became president of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies and renamed it the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship.
In 1922, Eleanor ran for British Parliament. She lost that year, but was elected in 1929 as an Independent member for the Combined English Universities. She was one of the first women to hold a position in Parliament.
In Parliament, Eleanor continued her lifelong activism. In her first speech, she criticized British colonialism and its anti-feminism. She specifically called out the inhumane practice of female genital mutilation in Kenya. As the Great Depression loomed, she campaigned for the peoples’ right to cheaper milk and better benefits for dependents of the unemployed.
Eleanor was also one of the first politicians to warn of the danger of fascist uprisings across Europe. She spoke candidly about her disappointment in British neutrality concerning politics in Germany, Spain, Italy, and Czechoslovakia. She joined a non-sectarian anti-Nazi council to support human rights and set up a parliamentary committee that took up individual refugee cases throughout the war.
Once, Eleanor allegedly tried to charter a ship to cross the blockade of Spain and rescue Republicans from the country. Later, in the early 1940s, Eleanor devoted resources to getting Jewish people out of Poland.
In 1945, Eleanor finally saw her fight for family allowances put into law by the Labor Party with the Family Allowance Act-- however, it was initially passed on the stipulation that the allowance would be paid to fathers, rather than the mothers she fought for. Eleanor’s rage was short-lived: the bill was contested by many women in Parliament, and was amended within the year to be paid to mothers.
Eleanor died suddenly of a heart attack on January 2nd, 1946. Forty years later, a blue plaque was dedicated to her by the Greater London Council at her former residence. It calls her the “Pioneer of Family Allowances.” She was also honored, along with 58 other women’s suffrage supporters, on the plinth of a statue commemorating fellow suffragist leader Millicent Fawcett in London in 2018.
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