Fawcett's history

The Fawcett Society has an unrivalled weight of history behind it. We trace our roots all the way back to 1866 when Millicent Fawcett began her life’s work leading the peaceful campaign for women’s votes. Her determination and courage inspired her fellow campaigners, and was finally rewarded when she saw women win an equal right to vote with men over 60 years later.

As the President of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, Millicent Fawcett played a central role right from the start.  In 1866 she led a small group of women who joined forces to collect more than 1,500 signatories to present to Parliament.

During its 60-year campaign, the union changed its name to the London and National Society for Women’s Service group, signalling that the group was not a single issue group, devoted to achieving the vote, but worked on a broad range of equality issues for women.  In 1953 the society was renamed the Fawcett Society, in honour of Dame Millicent Garrett Fawcett, who died in 1929.

As well as several name changes, the Fawcett Society has also moved premises many times. In 1926 Sarah Clegg established a Women’s Service Trust, which enabled the society to open an all-purpose building, the Women’s Service House.  This housed a host of facilities including office accommodation, a suite of bedrooms and the Women’s Service Library. The new club atmosphere helped to engender ‘a feeling of immense loyalty and camaraderie amongst its members’. 

Bomb damage and financial problems meant that the Society bought a smaller property after the Second World War, which became known as Fawcett House.  The Women’s Service Library went on to become a large and impressive collection, which has since been re-housed in the purpose-built Women’s Library.

The 1970s onwards

The 1970s saw a new wave of feminism sweep the country.  Fawcett campaigned for and celebrated the passing of the Equal Pay Act in 1970 and the Sex Discrimination Act in 1975.

The Fawcett Society moved into the 1980s with a rallying call, a Women’s Action Day. This spearheaded by Mary Stott, former Fawcett chair and editor of the Guardian's Women's Pages. This event brought together representatives of nearly 70 organisations with a membership of at least a million members, and signalled Fawcett’s transformation from an extremely well-respected, but comparatively little-known body, to the professional and better-known organisation that we are today.