Helen Pankhurst Releases Deeds Not Words in Time for Suffragette Anniversary

6th February 2018 marks one hundred years since women got the vote in the UK, a change that came about thanks to the suffragette movement. Possibly the most well known woman of the entire movement was Emmeline Pankhurst and her great granddaughter Helen Pankhurst has released a book in time for the anniversary charting the lives of women, and change over the last century.

Deeds Not Words: The Story of Women’s Rights – Then and Now is out today, 6th February and is the story of the Suffragette movement, the rights women have gained since, and what still needs to happen for true equality. It’s promising to be an enlightening and historically interesting read. Here’s the blurb:

Why is it taking so long?

Despite huge progress since the suffragette campaigns and wave after wave of feminism, women are still fighting for equality. Why, at the present rate will we have to wait in Britain until 2069 for the gender pay gap to disappear? Why, in 2015, did 11% of women lose their jobs due to pregnancy discrimination? Why, globally, has 1 in 3 women experienced physical or sexual violence?

In 2018, on the centenary of one of the greatest steps forward for women – the Fourth Reform Act, which saw propertied women over 30 gain the vote for the first time – suffragette descendant and campaigner Helen Pankhurst charts how the lives of women in the UK have changed over the last 100 years. She celebrates landmark successes, little-known victories, where progress has stalled or reversed, looking at politics, money, identity, violence, culture and social norms. The voices of both pioneers and ordinary women – in all their diversity – are woven into the analysis which ends with suggestions about how to better understand and strengthen feminist campaigning and with aims for the future.

Combining historical insight with inspiring argument, Deeds not Words reveals how far women have come since the suffragettes, how far we still have to go, and how we might get there. It is essential reading for anyone who wants to explore one of the most central and pressing conversations of our time.

Helen Pankhurst has continued the work of her great grandmother and is a women’s activist and senior advisor to CARE international, working in the UK and Ethiopia, is trustee of ActionAid and regularly speaks at Women’s Day events every year.