Exit: Why did women want suffrage and why did
men have a hard time accepting that?

A statue marking the life of suffragist Millicent Fawcett was unveiled in London this week.

This hugely influential feminist campaigned for the right to vote, which was granted to women over the age of 30 a century ago in 1918.

But even as late as 1917 - just months before the bill was passed - powerful men in Parliament were trying to stop votes for women.

Here are some of their arguments, according to House of Commons records.

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Emmeline Pankhurst being arrested, 1910

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Sir James Grant, MP for Whitehaven

"Men have the vote and the power at the present moment; I say for Heaven's sake let us keep it.

"We are controlled and worried enough by women at the present time, and I have heard no reason why we should alter the present state of affairs."

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A suffragette selling a copy of 'The Suffragette' to another woman, 1910.

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Rowland Hunt, MP for Ludlow

"There are obvious disadvantages about having women in Parliament. I do not know what is going to be done about their hats.

"How is a poor little man to get on with a couple of women wearing enormous hats in front of him?"

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A protest march by women suffragettes in London with police in attendance. The banner held by the leading women reads '1st Woman Suffragist Arrested in London'.

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Frederick Banbury, MP for City of London

"Women are likely to be affected by gusts and waves of sentiment.

"Their emotional temperament makes them so liable to it. But those are not the people best fitted in this practical world either to sit in this House... or to be entrusted with the immense power which this bill gives them."

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A crowd in Hyde Park at a suffragette meeting, circa 1910.

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Sir Charles Hobhouse, MP for Bristol East and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster

"You have at the present moment certain statistics which show that both the birth and marriage rate are decreasing.

"Can you adopt at this time a policy which might mean an immense destruction of the population of the country which it is essential should not only be retained, but increased."

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A woman speaking from a platform to a densely packed crowd - 'The Suffragettes busy at Portsmouth. Miss Douglas Smith.

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Sir Charles Henry, MP for Wellington

"One of the greatest features in connection with this country is the responsibility of men towards women, and I would view with the greatest apprehension any step which would tend to relieve men of that responsibility."

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English suffragette Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst (1882 - 1960) stands on a platform to paint the front of the Women's Social Defence League premises in Bow Road, East London, 11 October 1912.

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Sir John Rees, MP for Nottingham East

"Women are tremendously accessible, extraordinarily impressionable, noted for the adoption of any new thing, and for the easy acceptance of other people's views.

"Are those qualities which fit women to rule over the home and foreign affairs of a mighty empire?"

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