This Act of Parliament (7 Edw. VII) clarified the right of certain women ratepayers to be elected to Borough and County Councils in England and Wales. It followed years of uncertainty and confusion, which included challenges in the courts when women first tried to stand for the London County Council.
Women had been elected to separate boards dealing with the Poor Law and the 1870 Education Act and were entitled to serve on the new urban and rural district councils from 1894. Women had lost their influence on education boards when the free-standing boards were absorbed into newly established councils. Women had also lost places when towns grew and obtained Borough status. The 1907 Act gave widows and unmarried women the right to stand anywhere in local government.
The first female councillor in England was Sarah Elizabeth Woodward, elected in Bewdley.
Famous quotes containing the words women and/or act:
“Profound as race prejudice is against the Negro American, it is not practically as far- reaching as the prejudice against women. For stripping away the sentimentality which makes Mother’s Day and Best American Mother Contests, the truth is that women suffer all the effects of a minority.”
—Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973)
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Rank, ravenous, disgusting in the act or in repose,
All fever, filth and sweat, its bestial strength
And bestial decay, by pain and labour grows at length
Fragile and luminous.”
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