SPEAKER_02: Reboot your credit card with Apple Card. It gives you unlimited daily cash back that can earn 4.15% annual percentage yield when you open a savings account. A high yield, low effort way to grow your money with no fees. Apply for Apple Card now in the Wallet app on iPhone to start earning and growing your daily cash with savings today. Apple Card subject to credit approval. Savings is available to Apple Card owners subject to eligibility. Savings accounts by Goldman Sachs Bank USA. Member FDIC, terms apply.
SPEAKER_01: Hey, can I let you in on a little secret? Ugh, I'm obsessed with the Drop app. Drop makes it so easy to score free gift cards just for doing my everyday shopping at places like Ulta, Sam's Club, and Lyft. So if you're like me and love a good shopping spree, download Drop today and join the secret club of savvy shoppers. And use my code, getdrop999, to get $5.
SPEAKER_03: My name is Diana Hock and I'm an operations manager at Morgan & Morgan. At Morgan & Morgan, we've made it really easy. Anything that we need from you, you're able to do from the comfort of your home. You can just dial pound law and you talk to someone like me.
SPEAKER_04: If you or any one of your family has been injured, call Morgan & Morgan, America's largest injury law firm. We've collected over $15 billion for our clients. It's easy. Visit forthepeople.com for an office near you.
SPEAKER_00: Hello, from Wonder Media Network, I'm Alex Strom-Burns. I'm a production assistant and producer of Womanica. And this month, I had the pleasure of selecting the women you'll be hearing about. This month, we're highlighting peace builders. In times of conflict, these women have stepped in, bringing their creativity and insight to help facilitate peace around the globe. In selecting these women, I had the chance to learn about the many ways in which peace can be considered and the many ways in which peace can be constructed. I hope you, as the listener, come away with an expanded notion of what peace can look like. Today, we're talking about a British feminist, socialist, and pacifist. She was a socialite and a social reformer with a self-made political philosophy that put feminism front and center. Her story might make you think differently about the central role of suffragists in politics, long before women got the vote. Let's meet Ethel Snowden. Ethel was born in 1881 in Harrogate, a small town in the heart of Yorkshire that became popular for spa tourism. Comfortably middle class, she attended public school and later Edge Hill College before becoming a schoolteacher in Leeds. While studying, Ethel attended the church of a radical preacher whose sermons praised the virtues of social work, pacifism, and community. She joined his reform work, dipping a toe in the political pool by championing temperance and teetotalism, complete abstinence from alcohol. Ethel found herself further and further entranced by the political world. Each of her individual causes informed one another. She developed a feminist political theory that encompassed her beliefs in socialism, suffrage, and peace. Though many political groups in England at the time championed socialism, few saw women's suffrage as an urgent political issue. But to Ethel, putting a pin in suffrage was nonsensical. In her view, feminism was actually the focal point from which political systems had to develop. In 1907, she collected her thoughts in her first published work, A Woman Socialist. In it, she argued that socialism would never last if it did not first guarantee the equality of women. And unfeminist socialism only furthered inequality. Her book also advocated for state control of marriage, joint title by women to housekeeping money, and a state salary for mothers. In 1905, Ethel met Philip Snowden while he was cycling to a Labour Party meeting. They bewitched each other. Ethel, with her wit and fervour, Philip with his optimistic, progressive hopes for the Labour Party. They married soon after and became a power couple in leftist British politics. In Parliament, Philip championed Ethel's work. He was a member of the Men's League for Women's Suffrage and campaigned actively for the vote. By the early 1910s, Ethel was gaining fame as a magnetic speaker. Profiles described her as blonde, well-dressed, and with looks that rivalled a Gibson girl. Newspapers and cartoonists publicised Ethel's face, as well as her blunt demeanour. But despite her combative nature at the podium, Ethel was growing into a fierce pacifist. In the summer of 1914, she and Philip took off on a worldwide speaking tour. Within a matter of weeks, World War I broke out. For a pacifist like Ethel, the war was obviously distressing. But it also caused a schism within the larger suffrage movement. Some women thought the vote was no longer necessary. Some thought the vote was more important now than ever. How were women supposed to support their country entering a war when they had no political voice? Over the next few years, Ethel became a leading figure in the Women's Peace Crusade. They advocated for a negotiated end to the war, rather than one that was settled on the battlefield. In her speeches, Ethel often spoke of men needing to love one another. After the war, Ethel continued to rise in the Labour Party. She was elected to the party's Executive National Committee. But in the early 1920s, after a visit to Russia, she started to speak out against Bolshevism, which was popular with the British left wing at the time. By 1922, she'd been voted off the Executive Committee. Though Ethel remained a pacifist all her life, she didn't condemn Britain's involvement in World War II. She saw it instead as the lesser of two evils against the Nazi threat. In 1947, she suffered a severe stroke that limited her motor functions. Still, in 1950, she found the strength to support the candidate Cyril Black, one of the few teetotalers left in politics. She died that same year, at the age of 69. All month, we're talking about peacebuilders. For more information, find us on Facebook and Instagram, at Womanika Podcast. Special thanks to co-creators Jenny and Liz Kaplan for having me as a guest host. Talk to you tomorrow.
