Google pays tribute to suffragist with stunning Doodle
2018 marks 100 years since some women first got the right to vote in the UK.
And, if you visit Google dot com today, you'll come face to face with the woman who made it her life's work to get women the right to vote.
Today's Google Doodle pays tribute to Millicent Fawcett, a pioneer of women's suffrage who played an instrumental role in securing the vote for six million British women over the age of 30 in 1918.
The doodle was created by Pearl Law, a London-based illustrator and zine-maker. It shows Fawcett leading a march, flanked by fellow suffragists.
According to the Fawcett Society—a women's rights charity named after her—Fawcett organised the first petition for women's suffrage when she was 19 years old.
From 1907 until 1919, Fawcett was president of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, which had 50,000 members—"the largest organisation agitating for female suffrage at the time."
"Her powerful and peaceful mass campaign was instrumental in securing the first extension of voting rights for women in 1918," reads a biography by the Fawcett Society.
Google shared the early sketches of the Doodle in a blog post. The sketches feature a reference to the words which adorn a recently-unveiled statue of Fawcett in London's Parliament Square: "Courage calls to courage everywhere."
This quote was written by Fawcett as a "rallying cry" in "respect of" the suffragette Emily Wilding Davison, who was fatally injured by the King's horse at Epsom derby in 1913.
Topics Activism
Rachel Thompson is the Features Editor at Mashable. Rachel's second non-fiction book The Love Fix: Reclaiming Intimacy in a Disconnected World is out now, published by Penguin Random House in Jan. 2025. The Love Fix explores why dating feels so hard right now, why we experience difficult emotions in the realm of love, and how we can change our dating culture for the better.
A leading sex and dating writer in the UK, Rachel has written for GQ, The Guardian, The Sunday Times Style, The Telegraph, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Stylist, ELLE, The i Paper, Refinery29, and many more.
Rachel's first book Rough: How Violence Has Found Its Way Into the Bedroom And What We Can Do About It, a non-fiction investigation into sexual violence was published by Penguin Random House in 2021.
