Activism and the Electoral Participation of Women

Can political activism foster electoral participation? We investigate this question by examining the role of the British suffragists in fostering women’s electoral participation. While scholars have shown that women politicians increase women’s participation, less attention has been paid to the role of activists. We fill this gap by studying the 1913 Pilgrimage, a large-scale nationwide march in support of women’s parliamentary suffrage. Using a novel database of geocoded electoral registers, we employ a Differences in-Differences strategy to show that proximity to the Pilgrimage increased women’s registration in local elections. To explain this effect, we show that exposure to women activists spurred other women’s political mobilization, that our results are not driven by an endogenous selection of the march path and cannot be attributed to mobilization by other movements or politicians. Our findings highlight that women’s activism can drive political participation even in the virtual absence of women politicians.