Citation 8 & 9 Geo. 5 c. 47 Territorial extent United Kingdom Commencement 21 November 1918 | Introduced by Lord Robert Cecil Royal assent 21 November 1918 | |
Long title An Act to amend the Law with respect to the Capacity of Women to sit in Parliament. | ||
The Parliament (Qualification of Women Act) 1918 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It gave women over 21 the right to stand for election as an MP. It did not alter the minimum age for a woman to vote in an election, which had been 30 since the Representation of the People Act 1918. It was not until the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928 that women were given the vote on equal terms with men, at the age of 21.
At 27 words it is the shortest UK statute.
Effects
The Representation of the People Act 1918, passed on 6 February 1918, gave about 8.4 million women the vote, and it led to the Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act being passed. In the 1918 election to the House of Commons, seventeen women candidates stood to be elected, among them well-known suffragette Christabel Pankhurst, representing the Women's Party in Smethwick. However the only woman to be elected was the Sinn Féin candidate for Dublin St. Patrick's, Constance Markievicz. She chose not to take her seat at Westminster and instead sat in Dáil Éireann (the First Dáil) in Dublin, following the popular Irish political policy of abstentionism. The first woman to take her seat in the House of Commons was Nancy Astor on December 1, 1919. She was elected as a Coalition Conservative MP for Plymouth Sutton on November 28, 1919, taking the seat her husband had previously resigned.
As Members of Parliament, women also gained the right to become government ministers. The first woman to become a cabinet minister and Privy Council member was Margaret Bondfield who was Minister of Labour from 1929 to 1931.