Thank you for mentioning that the suffragette Emily Wilding Davison died on 8 June 1913, while campaigning for votes for women (Record number of female MPs win seats in 2017 general election, theguardian.com, 9 June). When I went into the general election polling booth, exactly 104 years later on this day, I took with me a photograph of her and the suffragette leaders, and wrapped my voting paper around their images before putting the necessary cross on the form. All the suffragettes wanted a just and fair society, a society where women had equality in all walks of life. All those who campaigned for the parliamentary vote for women would be cheered by the news that a record number of 208 women have been elected to the House of Commons. But that number forms just 32% of all MPs in the UK. Gender parity in parliament, the seat of our democracy, still eludes us.
June Purvis
School of social, historical and literary studies, University of Portsmouth
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