WOMEN AND POLITICS

Some women wanted to work on causes they felt very close to, involving the rights and issues of women. In the mid 19th Century, new acts of Parliament concerning divorce and women's property laws, gave women the opportunity to create lives separate from their husbands. But it was the individual women, who, in the mid 19th Century, started the ball rolling.

Emily Davis worked on women's education and she founded Girton College Cambridge in 1869.

Francis Cobbe demanded that women could study for a university degree in 1862.

Josephine Butler and the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Act, so humiliating in its treatment of women.

The campaigning that led to Elizabeth Anderson becoming the first British licensed female doctor and the setting up of the London School of Medicine for women.
(Information from Intriguing History)