The campaign for suffrage was closely tied to what many referred to as a sex war between men and women. With the feminist movement, and suffrage in particular, women were rebelling against historical male sexual tyranny and their historical objectification in British society. Women devoted themselves to the Cause of acquiring the right to vote on issues of importance to their country, despite direct individual repercussions - societal contempt and ridicule and mistreatment (at time sexually) at the hands of men that sought to contain them. These are just some of the highlights in U.K.: In 1832, there was a Great Reform Act which confirmed the exclusion of women from the electorate. In 1864, the first Contagious Disease Act is passed in England, which is intended to control venereal disease by having prostitutes and women believed to be prostitutes be locked away in hospitals for examination and treatment.  Josephine Butler launched a campaign to get them repealed. Many have since argued that Butler's campaign destroyed the conspiracy of silence around sexuality and forced women to act in protection of others of their gender. In 1889, the Women’s Franchise League was established. In 1897, the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies NUWSS formed which was led by Millicent Fawcett. 1907, the Women's Freedom League was founded. In 1910,  Lady Constance Lytton disguised herself as a working class seamstress, Jane Wharton, and was arrested and endured force feeding to prove prejudice in prisons against working class women. In November 1910, Herbert Henry Asquith changed Bill to enfranchise more men instead of women. In August 04, 1914, the First World War was declared in Britain. The Birmingham branch of the organization continued to lobby Parliament and write letters to MPs. The Chartist Movement, which began in the late 1830s, has also been suggested to have included supporters of female suffrage. There is some evidence to suggest William Lovett, one of the authors of the People's Charter wished to include female suffrage as one of the campaign's demands but chose not to on the grounds that this would delay the implementation of the charter. The Cat and Mouse Act was passed by the British government in an attempt to prevent suffragettes from obtaining public sympathy; it provided the release of those whose hunger strikes had brought them sickness, as well as their re-imprisonment once they had recovered. The suffrage movement campaigned against the forced conscription of women to a sexual identity through the withholding of her education and her right to vote. It sought to accomplish this task by providing women opportunities which would establish them as individuals: in education and employment; in the rights to own property or obtain a divorce; in the right to vote. However, before acquiring these rights, the suffragettes would have to engage in an epic sex war, one which was often fought on the individual women's body. Both before and after the 1832 Reform Act there were people who advocated that women should have the right to vote. After the Reform Act's enactment the MP Henry Hunt argued that any woman who was single, a tax payer and had sufficient property should be allowed to vote.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_suffrage_in_the_United_Kingdom