Drawing on the Suffragettes' Legacy LONDON - The early years of the British suffrage movement make an unlikely subject for a comedy show, but this is the theme of a new prime-time BBC series that transports us back to 1910 and depicts the ineffectual efforts of a group of women from an Oxford suburb to transform their craft circle into a radical protest group. In the first episode of the series, "Up the Women," few of the women understand what the movement is for. "Women do not need votes," the craft circle's chairwoman announces. The present system works perfectly well. My husband votes for whom I tell him to vote. What could be a better system than that? Other members express bewildered skepticism at the decision by one of their members to become a suffragette. "And your husband approves of this?" they ask, aghast. Margaret can never be a suffragette. They're all mannish, flat-chested, bottom-heavy spinsters, aren't they?" one woman declares. "I've read that they've malformed heads and webbed hooves," another ventures. But by the end of the episode the Banbury intricate craft circle has voted to rename itself the "Banbury intricate craft circle politely demands women's suffrage." Soon they are marching to the village post office, carrying banners marked "Kill the king." Britain is experiencing a new rush of interest in the women's suffrage movement, marking the centenary of some key moments in the suffragettes" history. The BBC comedy, written by Jessica Hynes, joins documentaries exploring the theme and a wave of books on the subject. One hundred years ago this month, Emily Wilding Davison ran in front of the king's horse at the Epsom Derby race, carrying two suffrage flags. She suffered fatal injuries - a fractured skull and internal bleeding - and become a key suffragette martyr. She was convinced that by committing this one great act of self-sacrifice, she could help put an end to what she called the "intolerable torture of women." Clearly she failed in that ambitious goal. But she did raise the profile of the campaign, which five years later - toward the end of World War I, which upended the 19th-century world order - secured votes for some women in Britain, and by 1928 had achieved equal suffrage. While there is much to celebrate about the suffragette legacy, the anniversary has prompted new analysis of how the campaign for women's equality in Britain is faring, with the inevitably bleak conclusion that there is still a very long way to go. This month, tribute was paid to Ms. Davison and the suffragettes in the House of Commons, and the government announced a new initiative for tackling the persistent underrepresentation of women in senior roles in the work force - an issue that might have moved the original suffragettes. Maria Miller, the minister for women and equalities, set up a ministerial task force designed to eradicate sexism at work and announced a guide for parents on how to bring up their daughters to be "ambitious for themselves." Concerned that women make up 46 percent of the work force but take just a third of management roles, about the lack of female entrepreneurs and the shortage of women in the boardroom, the government has promised to encourage employers to hire more women over 50 and to embrace the benefits of flexible work hours. It also says it wants more stay-at-home mothers to return to the workplace. Convinced that a shortage of successful women is holding Britain's economy back, Ms. Miller claims that by getting more stay-at-home mothers back to work, economic growth could be raised 0.5 percent a year, or 10 percent by 2030. "While women need work, work also needs women," she said, announcing the proposals. This soft-touch initiative has had a mixed response - with some irritation at the implication that the lack of female presence is entirely down to women being insufficiently aspirational, and further raised eyebrows at the suggestion that representation in boardrooms is the government's key equality marker, at a time when the government's austerity policies are widely believed to have a particularly negative effect on women. As a step toward the advancement of equal rights, the publication of an information pack for the parents of girls on how to nurture ambition seems rather small in scale and lacks the potency of the suffragette struggle. But the legacy of the women's suffrage movement can be seen elsewhere. This week, campaigners from UK Feminista, a new protest movement fighting for gender equality, will be targeting British supermarkets, calling on them to remove pornographic men's magazines from sale. Campaigners from the End Violence Against Women Coalition will be lobbying the government to take action against the abuse of women and girls, arguing that with sexual assaults on women rarely out of the headlines, urgent steps are needed. Their protest style may not be dramatic enough to fuel future BBC series, but a new generation of British feminist campaigners is thriving. Amelia Gentleman is a journalist with The Guardian. Katrin Bennhold is on sabbatical leave.