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Votes for Women: Still a dream for many women with learning disabilities

A blog by Catherine Carter, project worker at CHANGE and woman with learning disabilities, looking at the history of women's right to vote and how things are today for people with learning disabilities and their right to vote.
Votes for Women: Still a dream for many women with learning disabilities
     It took women a lot of years before any of us were allowed to vote.  When the Queen was Victoria, only some men could vote.  Both men and women said this was wrong and started to talk about it. After the year 1900 some women got more cross about this and started their own group to work on votes for women.  The group was called the “Women’s Social and Political Union” and was started by a mum and her daughters.  The mum was called Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters were Christabel, Sylvia and Adela.  They lived in Manchester and the house they lived in is now called the “Pankhurst Centre”.

     The women started doing things that were against the law to make the newspapers write about votes for women.  The women broke windows with stones that had leaflets attached, asking for votes for women.  They also smashed some paintings with a hammer in Manchester City Art Gallery. These paintings are currently on display.  They also did a lot of other things. 

The women who did this were called “suffragettes” and they were sent to prison and were very brave about it.  Some even refused to eat in prison and the government forced some to have food through a tube.  Some women became ill and even died because of this.  Still no women were allowed to vote.

 
Votes for Women: Still a dream for many women with learning disabilities
     When the First World War started in 1914 the women stopped doing all of this because of the war.  They helped support the soldiers instead.  After the war the politicians decided to give more men the vote. 

Then they said that they had better let some women vote too, so that the suffragettes did not start up again.  So in 1918 older women were allowed to vote for the first time.  That is now 100 years ago and so a lot of people are having events to celebrate this happening 100 years ago.

 It took ten more years before everyone got the right to vote.  In 1928 all people over 21 were allowed to vote, for the first time.  In 1970 the age for voting was lowered to 18.  So now everyone who is 18 years old or older can vote in elections.  The only people who cannot vote are Lords, people who are not British and some prisoners. 
Votes for Women: Still a dream for many women with learning disabilities
Today, at CHANGE we want to remember this day and to think about women with learning disabilities and the right to vote.

The law says that women with learning disabilities can vote. The United Nations state that all persons with disabilities have the right to vote (Article 29).

This is why MENCAP has campaigned for easy read manifestos. But they said that in the 2014 general election one in five people with learning disabilities were turned away from a polling station.  Still most women with learning disabilities cannot vote, the system is inaccessible for us.
Votes for Women: Still a dream for many women with learning disabilities
Here at CHANGE we want to understand better the barriers that women with learning disabilities face for voting in England. For this we have spoken to our people with learning disabilities, and they said that:

- The postal form is not accessible.
- Each political party should send easy read manifestos out in the post
- Accessible information about what the vote is for, and what each candidate stands for, should be sent to people with learning disabilities.
- The local authority should send the accessible information for people with learning disabilities. It would help if they had a register of people with learning disabilities.
- Polling Stations should be accessible, including trained officers who can help people with learning disabilities if they need to.
- People with learning disabilities feel MP’s don’t know much about having learning disability and they often compare it to mental health.
- It could help if more schools could talk about politics and what voting is about.

We invite you to join in our conversation. We would love you to tell us about your own experience of voting or not voting as a person with a learning disability.

And don't forget to visit  https://changepeoplephilipa.wordpress.com for more amazing stories from people with learning disabilities.

 
February 6 / 2018
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