History Of Feminism
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The history of feminism comprises the narratives (
chronological Chronology (from Latin , from Ancient Greek , , ; and , ''wikt:-logia, -logia'') is the science of arranging events in their order of occurrence in time. Consider, for example, the use of a timeline or sequence of events. It is also "the deter ...
or thematic) of the
movements Movement may refer to: Generic uses * Movement (clockwork), the internal mechanism of a timepiece * Movement (sign language), a hand movement when signing * Motion, commonly referred to as movement * Movement (music), a division of a larger c ...
and
ideologies An ideology is a set of beliefs or values attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely about belief in certain knowledge, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones". Form ...
which have aimed at
equal Equal(s) may refer to: Mathematics * Equality (mathematics). * Equals sign (=), a mathematical symbol used to indicate equality. Arts and entertainment * ''Equals'' (film), a 2015 American science fiction film * ''Equals'' (game), a board game ...
rights for women. While
feminists Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideology, ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social gender equality, equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern soci ...
around the world have differed in causes, goals, and intentions depending on time,
culture Culture ( ) is a concept that encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and Social norm, norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, Social norm, customs, capabilities, Attitude (psychology), attitudes ...
, and country, most
Western Western may refer to: Places *Western, Nebraska, a village in the US *Western, New York, a town in the US *Western Creek, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western Junction, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western world, countries that id ...
feminist historians assert that all
movements Movement may refer to: Generic uses * Movement (clockwork), the internal mechanism of a timepiece * Movement (sign language), a hand movement when signing * Motion, commonly referred to as movement * Movement (music), a division of a larger c ...
that work to obtain
women's rights Women's rights are the rights and Entitlement (fair division), entitlements claimed for women and girls worldwide. They formed the basis for the women's rights movement in the 19th century and the feminist movements during the 20th and 21st c ...
should be considered feminist movements, even when they did not (or do not) apply the term to themselves. Some other historians limit the term "feminist" to the modern feminist movement and its progeny, and use the label "
protofeminist Protofeminism is a concept that anticipates modern feminism in eras when the feminist concept as such was still unknown. This refers particularly to times before the 20th century, although the precise usage is disputed, as 18th-century feminism ...
" to describe earlier movements. Modern Western feminist history is conventionally split into time periods, or "waves", each with slightly different aims based on prior progress: *
First-wave feminism First-wave feminism was a period of feminist activity and thought that occurred during the 19th and early 20th century throughout the Western world. It focused on De jure, legal issues, primarily on securing women's right to vote. The term is oft ...
of the 19th and early 20th centuries focused on overturning legal inequalities, particularly addressing issues of
women's suffrage Women's suffrage is the women's rights, right of women to Suffrage, vote in elections. Several instances occurred in recent centuries where women were selectively given, then stripped of, the right to vote. In Sweden, conditional women's suffra ...
*
Second-wave feminism Second-wave feminism was a period of feminist activity that began in the early 1960s and lasted roughly two decades, ending with the feminist sex wars in the early 1980s and being replaced by third-wave feminism in the early 1990s. It occurred ...
(1960s–1980s) broadened debate to include
cultural Culture ( ) is a concept that encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and Social norm, norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, Social norm, customs, capabilities, Attitude (psychology), attitudes ...
inequalities, gender norms, and the role of women in
society A society () is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. ...
*
Third-wave feminism Third-wave feminism is a feminist movement that began in the early 1990s, prominent in the decades prior to the fourth-wave feminism, fourth wave. Grounded in the civil-rights advances of the second-wave feminism, second wave, Generation X, Gen X ...
(1990s–2000s) refers to diverse strains of feminist activity, seen by third-wavers themselves both as a continuation of the second wave and as a response to its perceived failuresKrolokke, Charlotte and Anne Scott Sorensen, "From Suffragettes to Grrls" in ''Gender Communication Theories and Analyses: From Silence to Performance'' (Sage, 2005). *
Fourth-wave feminism Fourth-wave feminism is a feminist movement that began around 2012 and is characterized by a focus on the empowerment of women, the use of internet tools, and intersectionality. According to Rosemary Clark-Parsons, digital platforms have allow ...
(early 2010s–present) expands on the third wave's focus on
intersectionality Intersectionality is an analytical framework for understanding how groups' and individuals' social and political identities result in unique combinations of discrimination and privilege. Examples of these intersecting and overlapping factor ...
, emphasizing
body positivity Body positivity is a social movement that promotes a positive view of all bodies, regardless of size, shape, skin tone, gender, and physical abilities. Proponents focus on the appreciation of the functionality and health of the human body instea ...
, trans-inclusivity, and an open discourse about
rape culture Rape culture is a setting, as described by some sociological theories, in which rape is pervasive and normalized due to that setting's attitudes about gender and sexuality. Behaviors commonly associated with rape culture include victim blamin ...
in the social media era Although the "waves" construct has been commonly used to describe the history of feminism, the concept has also been criticized by non-White feminists for ignoring and erasing the history between the "waves", by choosing to focus solely on a few famous figures, on the perspective of a white bourgeois woman and on popular events, and for being racist and colonialist.


Early feminism

People and activists who discuss or advance women's equality prior to the existence of the
feminist movement The feminist movement, also known as the women's movement, refers to a series of social movements and political campaigns for Radical politics, radical and Liberalism, liberal reforms on women's issues created by inequality between men and wom ...
are sometimes labeled as ''protofeminist''. Some scholars criticize this term because they believe it diminishes the importance of earlier contributions or that feminism does not have a single begin or linear history as implied by terms such as ''protofeminist'' or ''postfeminist''.Cott, Nancy F. "What's In a Name? The Limits of 'Social Feminism'; or, Expanding the Vocabulary of Women's History". ''Journal of American History'' 76 (December 1989): 809–829 Around 24 centuries ago,
Plato Plato ( ; Greek language, Greek: , ; born  BC, died 348/347 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical Greece, Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the writte ...
, according to Elaine Hoffman Baruch, " rguedfor the total political and sexual equality of women, advocating that they be members of his highest class, ... those who rule and fight".
Andal Andal (ISO 15919: Āṇḍāḷ), also known as Godhai, Nachiyar, and Godha Devi, is the only female Alvars, Alvar. (Orthodoxy posits the number of Alvars as ten, though there are other references that include Andal and Madhurakavi Alvar, ...
, a female Tamil saint, lived around the 7th or 8th century. She is well known for writing '' Tiruppavai''. Andal has inspired women's groups such as Goda Mandali.Women's Lives, Women's Rituals in the Hindu Tradition;page 186 Her divine marriage to Vishnu is viewed by some as a feminist act, as it allowed her to avoid the regular duties of being a wife and gain autonomy. In the 12th century, the
Waldensians The Waldensians, also known as Waldenses (), Vallenses, Valdesi, or Vaudois, are adherents of a church tradition that began as an ascetic movement within Western Christianity before the Reformation. Originally known as the Poor of Lyon in the l ...
Christian sect espoused some feministic ideas.


Renaissance Feminism

Italian-French writer
Christine de Pizan Christine de Pizan or Pisan (, ; born Cristina da Pizzano; September 1364 – ), was an Italian-born French court writer for King Charles VI of France and several French royal dukes, in both prose and poetry. Christine de Pizan served as a cour ...
(1364 – c. 1430), the author of ''
The Book of the City of Ladies ''The Book of the City of Ladies'', or ''Le Livre de la Cité des Dames'', is a book written by Christine de Pizan believed to have been finished by 1405. Perhaps Pizan's most famous literary work, it is her second work of lengthy prose. Pizan u ...
'' and ''Epître au Dieu d'Amour'' (''Epistle to the God of Love'') is cited by
Simone de Beauvoir Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir (, ; ; 9 January 1908 – 14 April 1986) was a French existentialist philosopher, writer, social theorist, and feminist activist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, nor was she ...
as the first woman to denounce
misogyny Misogyny () is hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against Woman, women or girls. It is a form of sexism that can keep women at a lower social status than Man, men, thus maintaining the social roles of patriarchy. Misogyny has been wide ...
and write about the relation of the sexes. Christine de Pizan also wrote one of the early fictional accounts of
gender transition Gender transition is the process of affirming and expressing one's internal sense of gender, rather than the sex assigned to them at birth. It is a recommended course of treatment for individuals experiencing gender dysphoria, providing impro ...
in '' Le Livre de la mutation de fortune''. Other early feminist writers include the 16th-century writers Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Modesta di Pozzo di Forzi, and Jane Anger, and the 17th-century writers Hannah Woolley in England,
Juana Inés de la Cruz Juana Inés de Asbaje y Ramírez de Santillana, better known as Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (12 November 1651 – 17 April 1695), was a Hieronymite nun and a Mexican writer, philosopher, composer and poet of the Baroque period, nicknamed "Th ...
in Mexico, Marie Le Jars de Gournay,
Anne Bradstreet Anne Bradstreet (née Dudley; March 8, 1612 – September 16, 1672) was among the most prominent of early English poets of North America and the first writer in England's North American colonies to be published. She is the first Puritan ...
,
Anna Maria van Schurman Anna Maria van Schurman (November 5, 1607 – May 4, 1678) was a Dutch people, Dutch painter, engraver, poet, classical scholar, philosopher, and Feminism, feminist writer who is best known for her exceptional learning and her defence of fem ...
and
François Poullain de la Barre François Poullain de la Barre (; July 1647 – 4 May 1723) was an author, Catholic priest, and a Cartesian philosopher. Life François Poullain de la Barre was born during July 1647 in Paris, France, to a family with judicial nobility. He adde ...
. The emergence of women as true intellectuals effected change also in Italian humanism. Cassandra Fedele was the first woman to join a humanist group and achieved much despite greater constraints on women. Renaissance defenses of women are present in a variety of literary genre and across Europe with a central claim of equality. Feminists appealed to principles that progressively lead to discourse of economic property injustice themes. Feminizing society was a way for women at this time to use literature to create interdependent and non-hierarchical systems that provided opportunities for both women and men. Men have also played an important role in the history of defending that women are capable and able to compete equally with men, including Antonio Cornazzano, Vespasiano de Bisticci, and Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti. Castiglione continues this trend of defending woman's moral character and that traditions are at fault for the appearance of women's inferiority. However, the critique is that there is no advocacy for social change, leaving her out of the political sphere, and abandoning her to traditional domestic roles. Although, many of them would encourage that if women were to be included in the political sphere it would be a natural consequence of their education. In addition, some of these men state that men are at fault for the lack of knowledge of intellectual women by leaving them out of historical records. One of the most important 17th-century feminist writers in the English language was
Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (; 1623 er exact birth date is unknown– 16 December 1673) was an English philosopher, poet, scientist, fiction writer, and playwright. She was a prolific writer, publishing over 12 origin ...
. Her knowledge was recognized by some, such as proto-feminist Bathsua Makin, who wrote that "The present Dutchess of New-Castle, by her own Genius, rather than any timely Instruction, over-tops many grave Grown-Men," and considered her a prime example of what women could become through education.


17th century

Margaret Fell's most famous work is "Women's Speaking Justified", a scripture-based argument for women's ministry, and one of the major texts on women's religious leadership in the 17th century. In this short pamphlet, Fell based her argument for equality of the sexes on one of the basic premises of Quakerism, namely spiritual equality. Her belief was that God created all human beings, therefore both men and women were capable of not only possessing the Inner Light but also the ability to be a prophet. Fell has been described as a "feminist pioneer

In 1622, Marie de Gournay published ''The Equality of Men and Women'', in which she argued for equality of the sexes.


18th century: the Age of Enlightenment

The
Age of Enlightenment The Age of Enlightenment (also the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment) was a Europe, European Intellect, intellectual and Philosophy, philosophical movement active from the late 17th to early 19th century. Chiefly valuing knowledge gained th ...
was characterized by secular intellectual reasoning and a flowering of philosophical writing. Many Enlightenment philosophers defended the rights of women, including
Jeremy Bentham Jeremy Bentham (; 4 February Dual dating, 1747/8 Old Style and New Style dates, O.S. 5 February 1748 Old Style and New Style dates, N.S.– 6 June 1832) was an English philosopher, jurist, and social reformer regarded as the founder of mo ...
(1781),
Marquis de Condorcet Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis of Condorcet (; ; 17 September 1743 – 29 March 1794), known as Nicolas de Condorcet, was a French Philosophy, philosopher, Political economy, political economist, Politics, politician, and m ...
(1790), and
Mary Wollstonecraft Mary Wollstonecraft ( , ; 27 April 175910 September 1797) was an English writer and philosopher best known for her advocacy of women's rights. Until the late 20th century, Wollstonecraft's life, which encompassed several unconventional ...
(1792). Other important writers of the time that expressed feminist views included
Abigail Adams Abigail Adams ( ''née'' Smith; – October 28, 1818) was the wife and closest advisor of John Adams, the second president of the United States, and the mother of John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the United States. She was a founder o ...
, Catharine Macaulay, and Hedvig Charlotta Nordenflycht.


Jeremy Bentham

The English
utilitarian In ethical philosophy, utilitarianism is a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions that maximize happiness and well-being for the affected individuals. In other words, utilitarian ideas encourage actions that lead to the ...
and
classical liberal Classical liberalism is a political tradition and a branch of liberalism that advocates free market and laissez-faire economics and civil liberties under the rule of law, with special emphasis on individual autonomy, limited government, eco ...
philosopher
Jeremy Bentham Jeremy Bentham (; 4 February Dual dating, 1747/8 Old Style and New Style dates, O.S. 5 February 1748 Old Style and New Style dates, N.S.– 6 June 1832) was an English philosopher, jurist, and social reformer regarded as the founder of mo ...
said that it was the placing of women in a legally inferior position that made him choose the career of a reformist at the age of eleven, though American critic
John Neal John Neal (August 25, 1793 – June 20, 1876) was an American writer, critic, editor, lecturer, and activist. Considered both eccentric and influential, he delivered speeches and published essays, novels, poems, and short stories between the 1 ...
claimed to have convinced him to take up women's rights issues during their association between 1825 and 1827. Bentham spoke for complete equality between sexes including the rights to vote and to participate in government. He opposed the asymmetrical sexual moral standards between men and women. In his ''Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation'' (1781), Bentham strongly condemned many countries' common practice to deny women's rights due to allegedly inferior minds.Miriam Williford
Bentham on the rights of Women
, ''Journal of the History of Ideas'', 1975.
Bentham gave many examples of able female
regent In a monarchy, a regent () is a person appointed to govern a state because the actual monarch is a minor, absent, incapacitated or unable to discharge their powers and duties, or the throne is vacant and a new monarch has not yet been dete ...
s.


Marquis de Condorcet

Nicolas de Condorcet Nicolas or Nicolás may refer to: People Given name * Nicolas (given name) Mononym * Nicolas (footballer, born 1999), Brazilian footballer * Nicolas (footballer, born 2000), Brazilian footballer Surname Nicolas * Dafydd Nicolas (c.1705–1774), ...
was a mathematician, classical liberal politician, leading French Revolutionary, republican, and
Voltaire François-Marie Arouet (; 21 November 169430 May 1778), known by his ''Pen name, nom de plume'' Voltaire (, ; ), was a French Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment writer, philosopher (''philosophe''), satirist, and historian. Famous for his wit ...
an
anti-clerical Anti-clericalism is opposition to religious authority, typically in social or political matters. Historically, anti-clericalism in Christian traditions has been opposed to the influence of Catholicism. Anti-clericalism is related to secularism, ...
ist. He was also a fierce defender of
human rights Human rights are universally recognized Morality, moral principles or Social norm, norms that establish standards of human behavior and are often protected by both Municipal law, national and international laws. These rights are considered ...
, including the equality of women and the
abolition of slavery Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the political movement to end slavery and liberate enslaved individuals around the world. The first country to fully outlaw slavery was France in 1315, but it was later used in its colonies. T ...
, unusual for the 1780s. He advocated for
women's suffrage Women's suffrage is the women's rights, right of women to Suffrage, vote in elections. Several instances occurred in recent centuries where women were selectively given, then stripped of, the right to vote. In Sweden, conditional women's suffra ...
in the new government in 1790 with ''De l'admission des femmes au droit de cité'' (''For the Admission to the Rights of Citizenship For Women'') and an article for ''Journal de la Société de 1789''.


Olympe de Gouges and a Declaration

Following de Condorcet's repeated, yet failed, appeals to the National Assembly in 1789 and 1790, Olympe de Gouges (in association with the Society of the Friends of Truth) authored and published the
Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen The Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen (), also known as the Declaration of the Rights of Woman, was written on 14 September 1791 by French activist, Feminism in France, feminist, and playwright Olympe de Gouges in res ...
in 1791. This was another plea for the French Revolutionary government to recognize the natural and political rights of women. De Gouges wrote the Declaration in the prose of the
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (), set by France's National Constituent Assembly in 1789, is a human and civil rights document from the French Revolution; the French title can be translated in the modern era as "Decl ...
, almost mimicking the failure of men to include more than a half of the French population in ''egalité''. Even though the Declaration did not immediately accomplish its goals, it did set a precedent for a manner in which feminists could satirize their governments for their failures in equality, seen in documents such as ''A Vindication of the Rights of Woman'' and ''A Declaration of Sentiments''.


Wollstonecraft and ''A Vindication''

Perhaps the most cited feminist writer of the time was
Mary Wollstonecraft Mary Wollstonecraft ( , ; 27 April 175910 September 1797) was an English writer and philosopher best known for her advocacy of women's rights. Until the late 20th century, Wollstonecraft's life, which encompassed several unconventional ...
, She identified the education and upbringing of women as creating their limited expectations based on a self-image dictated by the typically male perspective. Despite her perceived inconsistencies (Miriam Brody referred to the "Two Wollstonecrafts") reflective of problems that had no easy answers, this book remains a foundation stone of feminist thought. Wollstonecraft believed that both genders contributed to inequality. She took women's considerable power over men for granted, and determined that both would require education to ensure the necessary changes in social attitudes. Given her humble origins and scant education, her personal achievements speak to her own determination. For many commentators, Wollstonecraft represents the first codification of equality feminism, or a refusal of the
feminine Femininity (also called womanliness) is a set of attributes, behaviors, and Gender roles, roles generally associated with women and girls. Femininity can be understood as Social construction of gender, socially constructed, and there is also s ...
role in society.


19th century


The feminine ideal

19th-century feminists reacted to cultural inequities including the pernicious, widespread acceptance of the Victorian image of women's "proper" role and "sphere". The Victorian ideal created a dichotomy of "separate spheres" for men and women that was very clearly defined in theory, though not always in reality. In this ideology, men were to occupy the public sphere (the space of wage labor and politics) and women the private sphere (the space of home and children.) This " feminine ideal", also called " The Cult of Domesticity", was typified in Victorian conduct books such as ''
Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management ''Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management'', also published as ''Mrs. Beeton's Cookery Book'', is an extensive guide to running a household in Victorian Britain, edited by Isabella Beeton and first published as a book in 1861. Previously ...
'' and
Sarah Stickney Ellis Sarah Stickney Ellis, born Sarah Stickney (1799 – 16 June 1872), also known as Sarah Ellis, was an English author. She was a Quaker turned Congregationalist. Her numerous books are mostly about women's roles in society. She argued that women ...
's books. '' The Angel in the House'' (1854) and '' El ángel del hogar'' (The angel in the house) (1857), bestsellers by
Coventry Patmore Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore (23 July 1823 – 26 November 1896) was an English poet and critic, literary critic. He is best known for his book of poetry ''The Angel in the House'', a narrative poem about the Victorian era, Victorian ideal of ...
and María del Pilar Sinués de Marco, came to symbolize the Victorian feminine ideal.
Queen Victoria Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until Death and state funeral of Queen Victoria, her death in January 1901. Her reign of 63 year ...
herself disparaged the concept of feminism, which she described in private letters as the "mad, wicked folly of 'Woman's Rights'".


Feminism in fiction

As
Jane Austen Jane Austen ( ; 16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist known primarily for #List of works, her six novels, which implicitly interpret, critique, and comment on the English landed gentry at the end of the 18th century ...
addressed women's restricted lives in the early part of the century,
Charlotte Brontë Charlotte Nicholls (; 21 April 1816 – 31 March 1855), commonly known as Charlotte Brontë (, commonly ), was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë family, Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood and whose novel ...
, Anne Brontë,
Elizabeth Gaskell Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (''née'' Stevenson; 29 September 1810 – 12 November 1865), often referred to as Mrs Gaskell, was an English novelist, biographer, and short story writer. Her novels offer detailed studies of Victorian era, Victoria ...
, and
George Eliot Mary Ann Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880; alternatively Mary Anne or Marian), known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She wrot ...
depicted women's misery and frustration. In her autobiographical novel '' Ruth Hall'' (1854), American journalist Fanny Fern describes her own struggle to support her children as a newspaper columnist after her husband's untimely death.
Louisa May Alcott Louisa May Alcott (; November 29, 1832March 6, 1888) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet best known for writing the novel ''Little Women'' (1868) and its sequels ''Good Wives'' (1869), ''Little Men'' (1871), and ''Jo's Boys'' ...
penned a strongly feminist novel, '' A Long Fatal Love Chase'' (1866), about a young woman's attempts to flee her bigamist husband and become independent. Male authors also recognized injustices against women. The novels of George Meredith,
George Gissing George Robert Gissing ( ; 22 November 1857 – 28 December 1903) was an English novelist, who published 23 novels between 1880 and 1903. In the 1890s he was considered one of the three greatest novelists in England, and by the 1940s he had been ...
, and
Thomas Hardy Thomas Hardy (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Literary realism, Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, including the poetry ...
, and the plays of
Henrik Ibsen Henrik Johan Ibsen (; ; 20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) was a Norwegian playwright, poet and actor. Ibsen is considered the world's pre-eminent dramatist of the 19th century and is often referred to as "the father of modern drama." He pioneered ...
outlined the contemporary plight of women. Meredith's '' Diana of the Crossways'' (1885) is an account of Caroline Norton's life. One critic later called Ibsen's plays "feministic propaganda".


John Neal

John Neal John Neal (August 25, 1793 – June 20, 1876) was an American writer, critic, editor, lecturer, and activist. Considered both eccentric and influential, he delivered speeches and published essays, novels, poems, and short stories between the 1 ...
is remembered as America's first women's rights lecturer. Starting in 1823 and continuing at least as late as 1869,Sears (1978), p. 105 he used magazine articles, short stories, novels, public speaking, political organizing, and personal relationships to advance feminist issues in the United States and Great Britain, reaching the height of his influence in this field circa 1843. He declared intellectual equality between men and women, fought
coverture Coverture was a legal doctrine in English common law under which a married woman's legal existence was considered to be merged with that of her husband. Upon marriage, she had no independent legal existence of her own, in keeping with society's ...
, and demanded suffrage, equal pay, and better education and working conditions for women. Neal's early feminist essays in the 1820s fill an intellectual gap between
Mary Wollstonecraft Mary Wollstonecraft ( , ; 27 April 175910 September 1797) was an English writer and philosopher best known for her advocacy of women's rights. Until the late 20th century, Wollstonecraft's life, which encompassed several unconventional ...
, Catharine Macaulay, and
Judith Sargent Murray Judith Sargent Stevens Murray (May 1, 1751 – June 9, 1820) was an early American advocate for women's rights, an essay writer, playwright, poet, and letter writer. She was one of the first American proponents of the idea of the equality of the ...
and
Seneca Falls Convention The Seneca Falls Convention was the first women's rights convention. Its organizers advertised it as "a convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman". Held in the Wesleyan Chapel of the town of Seneca ...
-era successors like Sarah Moore Grimké,
Elizabeth Cady Stanton Elizabeth Cady Stanton ( Cady; November 12, 1815 – October 26, 1902) was an American writer and activist who was a leader of the women's rights movement in the U.S. during the mid- to late-19th century. She was the main force behind the 1848 ...
, and
Margaret Fuller Sarah Margaret Fuller (May 23, 1810 – July 19, 1850), sometimes referred to as Margaret Fuller Ossoli, was an American journalist, editor, critic, translator, and women's rights advocate associated with the American transcendentalism movemen ...
. As a male writer insulated from many common forms of attack against female feminist thinkers, Neal's advocacy was crucial in bringing the field back into the mainstream in England and the US. In his essays for ''
Blackwood's Magazine ''Blackwood's Magazine'' was a British magazine and miscellany printed between 1817 and 1980. It was founded by publisher William Blackwood and originally called the ''Edinburgh Monthly Magazine'', but quickly relaunched as ''Blackwood's Edinb ...
'' (1824-1825), Neal called for women's suffrage and "maintain dthat women are not ''inferior'' to men, but only ''unlike'' men, in their intellectual properties" and "would have women treated like men, of common sense." In '' The Yankee'' magazine (1828–1829), he demanded economic opportunities for women, saying "We hope to see the day... when our women of all ages... will be able to maintain herself, without being obliged to marry for bread." At his most well-attended lecture titled "Rights of Women," Neal spoke before a crowd of around 3,000 people in 1843 at New York City's largest auditorium at the time, the Broadway Tabernacle. Neal became even more prominently involved with the women's suffrage movement in his old age following the Civil War, both in
Maine Maine ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the United States, and the northeasternmost state in the Contiguous United States. It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Provinces and ...
and nationally in the US by supporting
Elizabeth Cady Stanton Elizabeth Cady Stanton ( Cady; November 12, 1815 – October 26, 1902) was an American writer and activist who was a leader of the women's rights movement in the U.S. during the mid- to late-19th century. She was the main force behind the 1848 ...
's and Susan B. Anthony's
National Woman Suffrage Association The National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) was formed on May 15, 1869, to work for women's suffrage in the United States. Its main leaders were Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. It was created after the women's rights movement spl ...
and writing for its journal, '' The Revolution''. Stanton and Anthony recognized his work after his death in their ''
History of Woman Suffrage ''History of Woman Suffrage'' is a book that was produced by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage and Ida Husted Harper. Published in six volumes from 1881 to 1922, it is a history of the women's suffrage movement, ...
.''


Marion Reid and Caroline Norton

At the outset of the 19th century, the dissenting feminist voices had little to no social influence. There was little sign of change in the political or social order, nor any evidence of a recognizable women's movement. Collective concerns began to coalesce by the end of the century, paralleling the emergence of a stiffer social model and code of conduct that
Marion Reid Marion Loretta Reid (; January 4, 1929 – June 22, 2023) was a Canadian politician who was the first female Speaker of the Legislative Assembly of Prince Edward Island, and the List of lieutenant governors of Prince Edward Island#Lieutenant G ...
described as confining and repressive for women. While the increased emphasis on feminine virtue partly stirred the call for a woman's movement, the tensions that this role caused for women plagued many early-19th-century feminists with doubt and worry, and fueled opposing views. In
Scotland Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...
, Reid published her influential '' A Plea for Woman'' in 1843, which proposed a transatlantic Western agenda for women's rights, including voting rights for women. Caroline Norton advocated for changes in British law. She discovered a lack of legal rights for women upon entering an abusive marriage. The publicity generated from her appeal to Queen Victoria and related activism helped change English laws to recognize and accommodate married women and child custody issues.


Florence Nightingale and Frances Power Cobbe

While many women including Norton were wary of organized movements, their actions and words often motivated and inspired such movements. Among these was
Florence Nightingale Florence Nightingale (; 12 May 1820 – 13 August 1910) was an English Reform movement, social reformer, statistician and the founder of modern nursing. Nightingale came to prominence while serving as a manager and trainer of nurses during th ...
, whose conviction that women had all the potential of men but none of the opportunities impelled her storied nursing career. At the time, her feminine virtues were emphasized over her ingenuity, an example of the
bias Bias is a disproportionate weight ''in favor of'' or ''against'' an idea or thing, usually in a way that is inaccurate, closed-minded, prejudicial, or unfair. Biases can be innate or learned. People may develop biases for or against an individ ...
against acknowledging female accomplishment in the mid-1800s.Popular image described in chapter 10: . Today's image described in: Due to varying ideologies, feminists were not always supportive of each other's efforts.
Harriet Martineau Harriet Martineau (12 June 1802 – 27 June 1876) was an English social theorist.Hill, Michael R. (2002''Harriet Martineau: Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives'' Routledge. She wrote from a sociological, holism, holistic, religious and ...
and others dismissed Wollstonecraft's contributions as dangerous, and deplored Norton's candidness, but seized on the
abolitionist Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the political movement to end slavery and liberate enslaved individuals around the world. The first country to fully outlaw slavery was Kingdom of France, France in 1315, but it was later used ...
campaign that Martineau had witnessed in the United States as one that should logically be applied to women. Her ''Society in America'' was pivotal: it caught the imagination of women who urged her to take up their cause. Anna Wheeler was influenced by Saint Simonian socialists while working in France. She advocated for suffrage and attracted the attention of
Benjamin Disraeli Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield (21 December 1804 – 19 April 1881) was a British statesman, Conservative Party (UK), Conservative politician and writer who twice served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He played a ...
, the Conservative leader, as a dangerous radical on a par with
Jeremy Bentham Jeremy Bentham (; 4 February Dual dating, 1747/8 Old Style and New Style dates, O.S. 5 February 1748 Old Style and New Style dates, N.S.– 6 June 1832) was an English philosopher, jurist, and social reformer regarded as the founder of mo ...
. She would later inspire early socialist and feminist advocate William Thompson, who wrote the first work published in English to advocate full equality of rights for women, the 1825 "Appeal of One Half of the Human Race". Feminists of previous centuries charged women's exclusion from education as the central cause for their domestic relegation and denial of social advancement, and women's 19th-century education was no better. Frances Power Cobbe, among others, called for education reform, an issue that gained attention alongside marital and property rights, and domestic violence. Female journalists like Martineau and Cobbe in Britain, and
Margaret Fuller Sarah Margaret Fuller (May 23, 1810 – July 19, 1850), sometimes referred to as Margaret Fuller Ossoli, was an American journalist, editor, critic, translator, and women's rights advocate associated with the American transcendentalism movemen ...
in America, were achieving journalistic employment, which placed them in a position to influence other women. Cobbe would refer to "
Woman's Rights Women's rights are the rights and entitlements claimed for women and girls worldwide. They formed the basis for the women's rights movement in the 19th century and the feminist movements during the 20th and 21st centuries. In some countries, ...
" not just in the abstract, but as an identifiable cause.


Ladies of Langham Place

Barbara Leigh Smith and her friends met regularly during the 1850s in London's Langham Place to discuss the united women's voice necessary for achieving reform. These "Ladies of Langham Place" included Bessie Rayner Parkes and Anna Jameson. They focused on education, employment, and marital law. One of their causes became the Married Women's Property Committee of 1855. They collected thousands of signatures for legislative reform petitions, some of which were successful. Smith had also attended the 1848
Seneca Falls Convention The Seneca Falls Convention was the first women's rights convention. Its organizers advertised it as "a convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman". Held in the Wesleyan Chapel of the town of Seneca ...
in America. Smith and Parkes, together and apart, wrote many articles on education and employment opportunities. In the same year as Norton, Smith summarized the legal framework for injustice in her 1854 ''A Brief Summary of the Laws of England concerning Women''. She was able to reach large numbers of women via her role in the '' English Women's Journal''. The response to this journal led to their creation of the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women (SPEW). Smith's Married Women's Property committee collected 26,000 signatures to change the law for all women, including those unmarried. Harriet Taylor published her ''Enfranchisement'' in 1851, and wrote about the inequities of family law. In 1853, she married
John Stuart Mill John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 7 May 1873) was an English philosopher, political economist, politician and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of liberalism and social liberalism, he contributed widely to s ...
, and provided him with much of the subject material for ''
The Subjection of Women ''The Subjection of Women'' is an essay by English philosopher, political economist and civil servant John Stuart Mill published in 1869, with ideas he developed jointly with his wife Harriet Taylor Mill. J.S. Mill submitted the finished manus ...
''. Emily Davies also encountered the Langham group, and with
Elizabeth Garrett Helen Elizabeth Garrett, commonly known as Elizabeth Garrett or Beth Garrett (June 30, 1963 – March 6, 2016), was an American professor of law and academic administrator. On July 1, 2015, she became the 13th president of Cornell University ...
created SPEW branches outside London.


Educational reform

The interrelated barriers to education and employment formed the backbone of 19th-century feminist reform efforts, for instance, as described by Harriet Martineau in her 1859 '' Edinburgh Journal'' article, "Female Industry". These barriers did not change in conjunction with the economy. Martineau, however, remained a moderate, for practical reasons, and unlike Cobbe, did not support the emerging call for the vote. The education reform efforts of women like Davies and the Langham group slowly made inroads. Queen's College (1848) and Bedford College (1849) in London began to offer some education to women from 1848. By 1862, Davies established a committee to persuade the universities to allow women to sit for the recently established Local Examinations, and achieved partial success in 1865. She published ''The Higher Education of Women'' a year later. Davies and Leigh Smith founded the first higher educational institution for women and enrolled five students. The school later became Girton College, Cambridge in 1869,
Newnham College, Cambridge Newnham College is a women's constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college was founded in 1871 by a group organising Lectures for Ladies, members of which included philosopher Henry Sidgwick and suffragist campaigner Millicen ...
in 1871, and
Lady Margaret Hall Lady Margaret Hall (LMH) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England, located on a bank of the River Cherwell at Norham Gardens in north Oxford and adjacent to the University Parks. The college is more formally known under ...
at Oxford in 1879. Bedford began to award degrees the previous year. Despite these measurable advances, few could take advantage of them and life for female students was still difficult. In the 1883 Ilbert Bill controversy, a
British India The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance in South Asia. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one form or another ...
bill that proposed Indian judicial jurisdiction to try British criminals, Bengali women in support of the bill responded by claiming that they were more educated than the English women opposed to the bill, and noted that more Indian women had degrees than British women at the time. As part of the continuing dialogue between British and American feminists,
Elizabeth Blackwell Elizabeth Blackwell (3 February 182131 May 1910) was an English-American physician, notable as the first woman to earn a medical degree in the United States, and the first woman on the Medical Register of the General Medical Council for the Un ...
, one of the first American women to graduate in medicine (1849), lectured in Britain with Langham support. She eventually took her degree in France. Garrett's very successful 1870 campaign to run for London School Board office is another example of a how a small band of very determined women were beginning to reach positions of influence at the local government level.


Women's campaigns

Campaigns gave women opportunities to test their new political skills and to conjoin disparate social reform groups. Their successes include the campaign for the Married Women's Property Act (passed in 1882) and the campaign to repeal the
Contagious Diseases Act The Contagious Diseases Acts (CD Acts) were passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom in 1864, with alterations and additions made by the ( 29 & 30 Vict. c. 35) and the ( 32 & 33 Vict. c. 96). In 1862, a committee had been establishe ...
s of 1864, 1866, and 1869, which united women's groups and utilitarian liberals like
John Stuart Mill John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 7 May 1873) was an English philosopher, political economist, politician and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of liberalism and social liberalism, he contributed widely to s ...
. Generally, women were outraged by the inherent inequity and misogyny of the legislation. For the first time, women in large numbers took up the rights of prostitutes. Prominent critics included Blackwell, Nightingale, Martineau, and Elizabeth Wolstenholme. Elizabeth Garrett, unlike her sister, Millicent, did not support the campaign, though she later admitted that the campaign had done well.
Josephine Butler Josephine Elizabeth Butler (; 13 April 1828 – 30 December 1906) was an English feminist and social reformer in the Victorian era. She campaigned for women's suffrage, the right of women to better education, the end of coverture in B ...
, already experienced in prostitution issues, a charismatic leader, and a seasoned campaigner, emerged as the natural leader of what became the
Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts The Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts was established in 1869 by Elizabeth Wolstenholme and Josephine Butler in response to the Contagious Diseases Acts that were passed by the British Parliament in 1864. Th ...
in 1869. Her work demonstrated the potential power of an organized lobby group. The association successfully argued that the Acts not only demeaned prostitutes, but all women and men by promoting a blatant sexual
double standard A double standard is the application of different sets of principles for situations that are, in principle, the same. It is often used to describe treatment whereby one group is given more latitude than another. A double standard arises when two ...
. Butler's activities resulted in the radicalization of many moderate women. The Acts were repealed in 1886. On a smaller scale,
Annie Besant Annie Besant (; Wood; 1 October 1847 – 20 September 1933) was an English socialist, Theosophy (Blavatskian), theosophist, freemason, women's rights and Home Rule activist, educationist and campaigner for Indian nationalism. She was an arden ...
campaigned for the rights of matchgirls (female factory workers) and against the appalling conditions under which they worked in London. Her work of publicizing the difficult conditions of the workers through interviews in bi-weekly periodicals like The Link became a method for raising public concern over social issues.


19th to 21st centuries

Feminists did not recognize separate waves of feminism until the second wave was so named by journalist Martha Weinman Lear in a 1968 ''New York Times Magazine'' articl
"The Second Feminist Wave"
according to Alice Echols. Jennifer Baumgardner reports criticism by professor
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (born September 10, 1938) is an American historian, writer, professor, and activist based in San Francisco. Born in Texas, she grew up in Oklahoma and is a social justice and feminist activist. She has written numerous books ...
of the division into waves and the difficulty of categorizing some feminists into specific waves,Baumgardner, Jennifer, ''F'em!'', ''op. cit.'', p. 244. argues that the main critics of a wave are likely to be members of the prior wave who remain vital, and that waves are coming faster. The "waves debate" has influenced how historians and other scholars have established the chronologies of women's political activis


First wave

The 19th- and early 20th-century feminist activity in the
English-speaking world The English-speaking world comprises the 88 countries and territories in which English language, English is an official, administrative, or cultural language. In the early 2000s, between one and two billion people spoke English, making it the ...
that sought to win
women's suffrage Women's suffrage is the women's rights, right of women to Suffrage, vote in elections. Several instances occurred in recent centuries where women were selectively given, then stripped of, the right to vote. In Sweden, conditional women's suffra ...
, female education rights, better working conditions, and abolition of gender double standards is known as first-wave feminism. The term "first-wave" was coined retrospectively when the term ''
second-wave feminism Second-wave feminism was a period of feminist activity that began in the early 1960s and lasted roughly two decades, ending with the feminist sex wars in the early 1980s and being replaced by third-wave feminism in the early 1990s. It occurred ...
'' was used to describe a newer feminist movement that fought social and cultural inequalities beyond basic political inequalities. In the United States, feminist movement leaders campaigned for the national
abolition of slavery Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the political movement to end slavery and liberate enslaved individuals around the world. The first country to fully outlaw slavery was France in 1315, but it was later used in its colonies. T ...
and Temperance before championing women's rights. American first-wave feminism involved a wide range of women, some belonging to conservative Christian groups (such as
Frances Willard Frances Elizabeth Caroline Willard (September 28, 1839 – February 17, 1898) was an American educator, temperance reformer, and women's suffragist. Willard became the national president of Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in 187 ...
and the
Woman's Christian Temperance Union The Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) is an international temperance organization. It was among the first organizations of women devoted to social reform with a program that "linked the religious and the secular through concerted and far ...
), others resembling the diversity and radicalism of much of
second-wave feminism Second-wave feminism was a period of feminist activity that began in the early 1960s and lasted roughly two decades, ending with the feminist sex wars in the early 1980s and being replaced by third-wave feminism in the early 1990s. It occurred ...
(such as Stanton, Anthony,
Matilda Joslyn Gage Matilda Joslyn Gage ( Joslyn; March 24, 1826 – March 18, 1898) was an American writer and activist. She is mainly known for her contributions to women's suffrage in the United States, but also campaigned for Native American rights, aboli ...
, and the
National Woman Suffrage Association The National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) was formed on May 15, 1869, to work for women's suffrage in the United States. Its main leaders were Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. It was created after the women's rights movement spl ...
, of which Stanton was president). First-wave feminism in the United States is considered to have ended with the passage of the
Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution The Nineteenth Amendment (Amendment XIX) to the United States Constitution prohibits the United States and its U.S. state, states from denying the Suffrage, right to vote to citizens of the United States on the basis of sex, in effect recogni ...
(1920), which granted women the right to vote in the United States. Activism for the equality of women was not limited to the United States. In mid-nineteenth century Persia,
Táhirih Táhirih (Ṭāhira) (, "The Pure One," also called Qurrat al-ʿAyn ( "Solace/Consolation of the Eyes") are both titles of Fatimah Baraghani/Umm-i Salmih (1814 or 1817 – August 16–27, 1852), an influential poet, women's rights activist and th ...
, an early member of the Bábí Faith, was active as a poet and religious reformer. At a time when it was considered taboo for women to speak openly with men in Persia, and for non-clerics to speak about religion, she challenged the intellectuals of the age in public discourse on social and theological matters. In 1848 she appeared before an assemblage of men without a veil and gave a speech on the rights of women, signaling a radical break with the prevailing moral order and the start of a new religious and social dispensation. After this episode she was put under house arrest by the Persian Government until her execution by strangling at the age of 35 in August 1852. At her execution she is reported as proclaiming "You can kill me as soon as you like, but you cannot stop the emancipation of women." The story of her life rapidly spread to European circles and she would inspire later generations of Iranian feminists. Members of the Bahá'í Faith recognize her as the first women's suffrage martyr and an example of fearlessness and courage in the advancement of the equality of women and men. Louise Dittmar campaigned for women's rights, in Germany, in the 1840s. Although slightly later in time,
Fusae Ichikawa was a Japanese people, Japanese feminist, politician and a leader of the Women's suffrage in Japan, women's suffrage movement. Ichikawa was a key supporter of women's suffrage in Japan, and her activism was partially responsible for the extensio ...
was in the first wave of women's activists in her own country of Japan, campaigning for women's suffrage. Mary Lee was active in the suffrage movement in South Australia, the first Australian colony to grant women the vote in 1894. In New Zealand, Kate Sheppard and Mary Ann Müller worked to achieve the vote for women by 1893. In the United States, the antislavery campaign of the 1830s served as both a cause ideologically compatible with feminism and a blueprint for later feminist political organizing. Attempts to exclude women only strengthened their convictions.
Sarah Sarah (born Sarai) is a biblical matriarch, prophet, and major figure in Abrahamic religions. While different Abrahamic faiths portray her differently, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all depict her character similarly, as that of a pious woma ...
and Angelina Grimké moved rapidly from the emancipation of slaves to the emancipation of women. The most influential feminist writer of the time was the colourful journalist
Margaret Fuller Sarah Margaret Fuller (May 23, 1810 – July 19, 1850), sometimes referred to as Margaret Fuller Ossoli, was an American journalist, editor, critic, translator, and women's rights advocate associated with the American transcendentalism movemen ...
, whose '' Woman in the Nineteenth Century'' was published in 1845. Her dispatches from Europe for the ''
New York Tribune The ''New-York Tribune'' (from 1914: ''New York Tribune'') was an American newspaper founded in 1841 by editor Horace Greeley. It bore the moniker ''New-York Daily Tribune'' from 1842 to 1866 before returning to its original name. From the 1840s ...
'' helped create to synchronize the
women's rights movement Women's rights are the rights and Entitlement (fair division), entitlements claimed for women and girls worldwide. They formed the basis for the women's rights movement in the 19th century and the feminist movements during the 20th and 21st c ...
.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton Elizabeth Cady Stanton ( Cady; November 12, 1815 – October 26, 1902) was an American writer and activist who was a leader of the women's rights movement in the U.S. during the mid- to late-19th century. She was the main force behind the 1848 ...
and
Lucretia Mott Lucretia Mott (née Coffin; January 3, 1793 – November 11, 1880) was an American Quakers, Quaker, Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist, women's rights activist, and social reformer. She had formed the idea of reforming the position ...
met in 1840 while en route to London where they were shunned as women by the male leadership of the first World's Anti-Slavery Convention. In 1848, Mott and Stanton held a woman's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, where a declaration of independence for women was drafted.
Lucy Stone Lucy Stone (August 13, 1818 – October 18, 1893) was an American orator, Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist and Suffrage, suffragist who was a vocal advocate for and organizer of promoting Women's rights, rights for women. In 1847, ...
helped to organize the first
National Women's Rights Convention The National Women's Rights Convention was an annual series of meetings that increased the visibility of the early women's rights movement in the United States. First held in 1850 in Worcester, Massachusetts, the National Women's Rights Conventio ...
in 1850, a much larger event at which
Sojourner Truth Sojourner Truth (; born Isabella Bomefree; November 26, 1883) was an American Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist and activist for African-American civil rights, women's rights, and Temperance movement, alcohol temperance. Truth was ...
, Abby Kelley Foster, and others spoke sparked Susan B. Anthony to take up the cause of women's rights. In December 1851, Sojourner Truth contributed to the feminist movement when she spoke at the Women's Convention in Akron, Ohio. She delivered her powerful "Ain't I a Woman" speech in an effort to promote women's rights by demonstrating their ability to accomplish tasks that have been traditionally associated with men. Barbara Leigh Smith met with Mott in 1858, strengthening the link between the
transatlantic Transatlantic, Trans-Atlantic or TransAtlantic may refer to: Film * Transatlantic Pictures, a film production company from 1948 to 1950 * Transatlantic Enterprises, an American production company in the late 1970s * ''Transatlantic'' (1931 film) ...
feminist movements. Stanton and
Matilda Joslyn Gage Matilda Joslyn Gage ( Joslyn; March 24, 1826 – March 18, 1898) was an American writer and activist. She is mainly known for her contributions to women's suffrage in the United States, but also campaigned for Native American rights, aboli ...
saw the Church as a major obstacle to women's rights, and welcomed the emerging literature on matriarchy. Both Gage and Stanton produced works on this topic, and collaborated on '' The Woman's Bible''. Stanton wrote " The Matriarchate or Mother-Age"Stanton, Elizabeth Cady. "The Matriarchate or Mother-Age", in Avery, Rachel Foster (ed.), ''Transactions of the National Council of Women of the United States''. Philadelphia, 1891. and Gage wrote '' Woman, Church and State'', neatly inverting
Johann Jakob Bachofen Johann Jakob Bachofen (22 December 1815 – 25 November 1887) was a Swiss antiquarian, jurist, philologist, anthropologist, and professor of Roman law at the University of Basel from 1841 to 1844. Bachofen is most often connected with his th ...
's thesis and adding a unique
epistemological Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that examines the nature, origin, and limits of knowledge. Also called "the theory of knowledge", it explores different types of knowledge, such as propositional knowledge about facts, practical knowled ...
perspective, the critique of objectivity and the perception of the subjective. Stanton once observed regarding assumptions of female inferiority, "The worst feature of these assumptions is that women themselves believe them". However this attempt to replace androcentric (male-centered) theological tradition with a gynocentric (female-centered) view made little headway in a women's movement dominated by religious elements; thus she and Gage were largely ignored by subsequent generations. By 1913, Feminism (originally capitalized) was a household term in the United States. Major issues in the 1910s and 1920s included
suffrage Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise is the right to vote in public, political elections and referendums (although the term is sometimes used for any right to vote). In some languages, and occasionally in English, the right to v ...
, women's partisan activism, economics and employment, sexualities and families, war and peace, and a Constitutional amendment for equality. Both equality and difference were seen as routes to women's empowerment. Organizations at the time included the
National Woman's Party The National Woman's Party (NWP) was an American women's political organization formed in 1916 to fight for women's suffrage. After achieving this goal with the 1920 adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, the NWP ...
, suffrage advocacy groups such as the
National American Woman Suffrage Association The National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) was an organization formed on February 18, 1890, to advocate in favor of women's suffrage in the United States. It was created by the merger of two existing organizations, the National Woma ...
and the National League of Women Voters, career associations such as the
American Association of University Women The American Association of University Women (AAUW), officially founded in 1881, is a non-profit organization that advances Justice, equity for women and girls through advocacy, education, and research. The organization has a nationwide Social net ...
, the National Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs, and the National Women's Trade Union League, war and peace groups such as the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom and the
International Council of Women The International Council of Women (ICW) is a women's organization working across national boundaries for the common cause of advocating women's rights, human rights for women. In March and April 1888, women leaders came together in Washington D.C ...
, alcohol-focused groups like the
Woman's Christian Temperance Union The Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) is an international temperance organization. It was among the first organizations of women devoted to social reform with a program that "linked the religious and the secular through concerted and far ...
and the Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform, and race- and gender-centered organizations like the National Association of Colored Women. Leaders and theoreticians included
Jane Addams Laura Jane Addams (September 6, 1860May 21, 1935) was an American Settlement movement, settlement activist, Social reform, reformer, social worker, sociologist, public administrator, philosopher, and author. She was a leader in the history of s ...
, Ida B. Wells-Barnett,
Alice Paul Alice Stokes Paul (January 11, 1885 – July 9, 1977) was an American Quaker, suffragette, suffragist, feminist, and women's rights activist, and one of the foremost leaders and strategists of the campaign for the Nineteenth Amendment to the Unit ...
,
Carrie Chapman Catt Carrie Chapman Catt (born Carrie Clinton Lane; January 9, 1859#Fowler, Fowler, p. 3 – March 9, 1947) was an American women's suffrage leader who campaigned for the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which gave U.S. women t ...
,
Margaret Sanger Margaret Sanger ( Higgins; September 14, 1879September 6, 1966) was an American birth control activist, sex educator, writer, and nurse. She opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, founded Planned Parenthood, and was instr ...
, and
Charlotte Perkins Gilman Charlotte Anna Perkins Gilman (; née Perkins; July 3, 1860 – August 17, 1935), also known by her first married name Charlotte Perkins Stetson, was an American humanist, novelist, writer, lecturer, early sociologist, advocate for social reform ...
.


Suffrage

The women's right to vote, with its legislative representation, represented a paradigm shift where women would no longer be treated as second-class citizens without a voice. The women's suffrage campaign is the most deeply embedded campaign of the past 250 years. At first, suffrage was treated as a lower priority. The French Revolution accelerated this, with the assertions of Condorcet and de Gouges, and the women who led the 1789 march on Versailles. In 1793, the
Society of Revolutionary Republican Women The Society of Revolutionary and Republican Women (, ') was a female-led revolutionary organization during the French Revolution. The Society officially began on May 10, 1793, and disbanded on September 16 of the same year. The Society managed to ...
was founded, and originally included suffrage on its agenda before it was suppressed at the end of the year. As a gesture, this showed that issue was now part of the European political agenda. German women were involved in the
Vormärz ' (; English: ''pre-March'') was a period in the history of Germany preceding the 1848 March Revolution in the states of the German Confederation. The beginning of the period is less well-defined. Some place the starting point directly after ...
, a prelude to the
1848 revolution The revolutions of 1848, known in some countries as the springtime of the peoples or the springtime of nations, were a series of revolutions throughout Europe over the course of more than one year, from 1848 to 1849. It remains the most widespre ...
. In Italy, Clara Maffei,
Cristina Trivulzio Belgiojoso Cristina Trivulzio di Belgiojoso (; 28 June 1808, Milan, Lombardy, Italy5 July 1871, near Milan) was an Italian noblewoman, the princess of Belgiojoso, who played a prominent part in Italian unification, Italy's struggle for independence. She is a ...
, and Ester Martini Currica were politically active in the events leading up to 1848. In Britain, interest in suffrage emerged from the writings of Wheeler and Thompson in the 1820s, and from Reid, Taylor, and Anne Knight in the 1840s. While New Zealand was the first sovereign state where women won the right to vote (1893), they did not win the right to stand in elections until later. The Australian State of
South Australia South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a States and territories of Australia, state in the southern central part of Australia. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories by area, which in ...
was the first sovereign state in the world to officially grant full suffrage to women ( in 1894).


The suffragettes

The Langham Place ladies set up a suffrage committee at an 1866 meeting at Elizabeth Garrett's home, renamed the London Society for Women's Suffrage in 1867. Soon similar committees had spread across the country, raising petitions, and working closely with John Stuart Mill. When denied outlets by establishment periodicals, feminists started their own, such as Lydia Becker's '' Women's Suffrage Journal'' in 1870. Other publications included Richard Pankhurst's '' Englishwoman's Review'' (1866). Tactical disputes were the biggest problem, and the groups' memberships fluctuated. Women considered whether men (like Mill) should be involved. As it went, Mill withdrew as the movement became more aggressive with each disappointment. The political pressure ensured debate, but year after year the movement was defeated in Parliament. Despite this, the women accrued political experience, which translated into slow progress at the local government level. But after years of frustration, many women became increasingly radicalized. Some refused to pay taxes, and the Pankhurst family emerged as the dominant movement influence, having also founded the Women's Franchise League in 1889, which sought local election suffrage for women.


International suffrage

The Isle of Man, a UK dependency, was the first free standing jurisdiction to grant women the vote (1881), followed by the right to vote (but not to stand) in New Zealand in 1893, where Kate Sheppard had pioneered reform. Some Australian states had also granted women the vote. This included Victoria for a brief period (1863–5), South Australia (1894), and Western Australia (1899). Australian women received the vote at the Federal level in 1902, Finland in 1906, and Norway initially in 1907 (completed in 1913).


Early 20th century

In the early part of the 20th century, also known as the Edwardian era, there was a change in the way women dressed from the Victorian rigidity and complacency. Women, especially women who married a wealthy man, would often wear what we consider today, practical. Books, articles, speeches, pictures, and papers from the period show a diverse range of themes other than political reform and suffrage discussed publicly. In the Netherlands, for instance, the main feminist issues were educational rights, rights to medical care, improved working conditions, peace, and dismantled gender double standards. Feminists identified as such with little fanfare.
Emmeline Pankhurst Emmeline Pankhurst (; Goulden; 15 July 1858 – 14 June 1928) was a British political activist who organised the British suffragette movement and helped women to win in 1918 the women's suffrage, right to vote in United Kingdom of Great Brita ...
formed the
Women's Social and Political Union The Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) was a women-only political movement and leading militant organisation campaigning for women's suffrage in the United Kingdom founded in 1903. Known from 1906 as the suffragettes, its membership and p ...
(WSPU) in 1903. As she put it, they viewed votes for women no longer as "a right, but as a desperate necessity". At the state level, Australia and the United States had already granted suffrage to some women. American feminists such as Susan B. Anthony (1902) visited Britain. While WSPU was the best-known suffrage group, it was only one of many, such as the Women's Freedom League and the
National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies The National Union of Women Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), also known as the ''suffragists'' (not to be confused with the suffragettes) was an organisation founded in 1897 of women's suffrage societies around the United Kingdom. In March 1919 it w ...
(NUWSS) led by Millicent Garrett Fawcett. WSPU was largely a family affair, although externally financed.
Christabel Pankhurst Dame Christabel Harriette Pankhurst (; 22 September 1880 – 13 February 1958) was a British suffragette born in Manchester, England. A co-founder of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), she directed Suffragette bombing and arson ca ...
became the dominant figure and gathered friends such as
Annie Kenney Ann "Annie" Kenney (13 September 1879 – 9 July 1953) was an English working-class suffragette and socialist feminist who became a leading figure in the Women's Social and Political Union. She co-founded its first branch in London with Minnie ...
, Flora Drummond, Teresa Billington, Ethel Smyth, Grace Roe, and Norah Dacre Fox (later known as Norah Elam) around her. Veterans such as Elizabeth Garrett also joined. In 1906, the ''
Daily Mail The ''Daily Mail'' is a British daily Middle-market newspaper, middle-market Tabloid journalism, tabloid conservative newspaper founded in 1896 and published in London. , it has the List of newspapers in the United Kingdom by circulation, h ...
'' first labeled these women "
suffragettes A suffragette was a member of an activist women's organisation in the early 20th century who, under the banner "Votes for Women", fought for women's suffrage, the right to vote in public elections in the United Kingdom. The term refers in part ...
" as a form of ridicule, but the term was embraced by the women to describe the more militant form of suffragism visible in public marches, distinctive green, purple, and white emblems, and the Artists' Suffrage League's dramatic graphics. The feminists learned to exploit photography and the media, and left a vivid visual record including images such as the 1914 photograph of Emmeline. The protests slowly became more violent, and included heckling, banging on doors, smashing shop windows, and arson.
Emily Davison Emily Wilding Davison (11 October 1872 – 8 June 1913) was an English suffragette who fought for Women's suffrage in the United Kingdom, votes for women in Britain in the early twentieth century. A member of the Women's Social and Polit ...
, a WSPU member, unexpectedly ran onto the track during the 1913
Epsom Derby The Derby Stakes, more commonly known as the Derby and sometimes referred to as the Epsom Derby, is a Group races, Group 1 flat Horse racing, horse race in England open to three-year-old Colt (horse), colts and Filly, fillies. It is run at Ep ...
and died under the King's horse. These tactics produced mixed results of sympathy and alienation. As many protesters were imprisoned and went on hunger-strike, the British government was left with an embarrassing situation. From these political actions, the suffragists successfully created publicity around their institutional discrimination and sexism.


Feminist science fiction

At the beginning of the 20th century, feminist science fiction emerged as a subgenre of
science fiction Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space ...
that deals with women's roles in society. Female writers of the
utopian literature Utopian and dystopian fiction are subgenres of speculative fiction that explore extreme forms of social and political structures. Utopian fiction portrays a setting that agrees with the author's ethos, having various attributes of another reality ...
movement at the time of
first-wave feminism First-wave feminism was a period of feminist activity and thought that occurred during the 19th and early 20th century throughout the Western world. It focused on De jure, legal issues, primarily on securing women's right to vote. The term is oft ...
often addressed sexism.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman Charlotte Anna Perkins Gilman (; née Perkins; July 3, 1860 – August 17, 1935), also known by her first married name Charlotte Perkins Stetson, was an American humanist, novelist, writer, lecturer, early sociologist, advocate for social reform ...
's '' Herland'' (1915) did so. '' Sultana's Dream'' (1905) by Bengali Muslim feminist Roquia Sakhawat Hussain depicts a gender-reversed
purdah Pardah or purdah (from Hindi-Urdu , , meaning "curtain") is a religious and social practice of sex segregation prevalent among some Muslim, Zoroastrian and Hindu communities. The purdah garment is the same as a burqa, or yashmak, i.e a veil ...
in a futuristic world. During the 1920s, writers such as Clare Winger Harris and Gertrude Barrows Bennett published science fiction stories written from female perspectives and occasionally dealt with gender- and sexuality-based topics while popular 1920s and 30s
pulp science fiction Pulp magazines (also referred to as "the pulps") were inexpensive fiction magazines that were published from 1896 until around 1955. The term "pulp" derives from the wood pulp paper on which the magazines were printed, due to their cheap nature. ...
exaggerated masculinity alongside sexist portrayals of women. By the 1960s, science fiction combined
sensationalism In journalism and mass media, sensationalism is a type of editorial tactic. Events and topics in news stories are selected and worded to excite the greatest number of readers and viewers. This style of news reporting encourages biased or emoti ...
with political and technological critiques of society. With the advent of feminism, women's roles were questioned in this "subversive, mind expanding genre". Feminist science fiction poses questions about social issues such as how society constructs gender roles, how reproduction defines gender, and how the political power of men and women are unequal. Some of the most notable feminist science fiction works have illustrated these themes using
utopia A utopia ( ) typically describes an imagined community or society that possesses highly desirable or near-perfect qualities for its members. It was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book ''Utopia (book), Utopia'', which describes a fictiona ...
s to explore societies where gender differences or gender power imbalances do not exist, and
dystopia A dystopia (lit. "bad place") is an imagined world or society in which people lead wretched, dehumanized, fearful lives. It is an imagined place (possibly state) in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmen ...
s to explore worlds where gender inequalities are escalated, asserting a need for feminist work to continue.


During the first and second world wars

Women entered the labor market during the
First World War World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...
in unprecedented numbers, often in new sectors, and discovered the value of their work. The war also left large numbers of women bereaved and with a net loss of household income. The scores of men killed and wounded shifted the demographic composition. War also split the feminist groups, with many women opposed to the war and others involved in the white feather campaign. Feminist scholars like
Françoise Thébaud Françoise Thébaud (born 1952) is a French historian, professor ''emeritus'' of history, and specialist in the history of women. In 2017, she was awarded the Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur. Early life and education Françoise Thébaud was ...
and Nancy F. Cott note a conservative reaction to World War I in some countries, citing a reinforcement of traditional imagery and literature that promotes motherhood. The appearance of these traits in wartime has been called the "nationalization of women." In the years between the wars, feminists fought discrimination and establishment opposition to advances in women's roles in the social world and workforce. In
Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer and one of the most influential 20th-century modernist authors. She helped to pioneer the use of stream of consciousness narration as a literary device. Vir ...
's ''
A Room of One's Own ''A Room of One's Own'' is an extended essay, divided into six chapters, by Virginia Woolf, first published in 1929. The work is based on two lectures Woolf delivered in October 1928 at Newnham College, Cambridge, Newnham College and Girton Co ...
'', Woolf describes the extent of the backlash and her frustration. By now, the word "feminism" was in use, but with a negative connotation from mass media, which discouraged women from self-identifying as such. When
Rebecca West Dame Cecily Isabel Fairfield (21 December 1892 – 15 March 1983), known as Rebecca West, or Dame Rebecca West, was a British author, journalist, literary critic and travel writer. An author who wrote in many genres, West reviewed books ...
, another prominent writer, had been attacked as "a feminist", Woolf defended her. West has been remembered for her comment "I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat, or a prostitute." In the 1920s, the nontraditional styles and attitudes of flappers were popular among American and British women.


Electoral reform

The United Kingdom's
Representation of the People Act 1918 The Representation of the People Act 1918 ( 7 & 8 Geo. 5. c. 64) was an act of Parliament passed to reform the electoral system in Great Britain and Ireland. It is sometimes known as the Fourth Reform Act. The act extended the franchise in pa ...
gave near-universal suffrage to men, and suffrage to women over 30. The Representation of the People Act 1928 extended equal suffrage to both men and women. It also shifted the socioeconomic makeup of the electorate towards the working class, favouring the Labour Party, who were more sympathetic to women's issues. The granting of the vote did not automatically give women the right to stand for Parliament and the Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act was rushed through just before the following election. Seventeen women were among the 1700 candidates nominated.
Christabel Pankhurst Dame Christabel Harriette Pankhurst (; 22 September 1880 – 13 February 1958) was a British suffragette born in Manchester, England. A co-founder of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), she directed Suffragette bombing and arson ca ...
narrowly failed to win a seat, and
Constance Markievicz Constance Georgine Markievicz ( ; ' Gore-Booth; 4 February 1868 – 15 July 1927), also known as Countess Markievicz and Madame Markievicz, was an Irish politician, revolutionary, nationalist, suffragist, and socialist who was the first woman ...
(Sinn Féin) was the first woman elected in Ireland in 1918, but as an
Irish nationalist Irish nationalism is a nationalist political movement which, in its broadest sense, asserts that the people of Ireland should govern Ireland as a sovereign state. Since the mid-19th century, Irish nationalism has largely taken the form of cult ...
, refused to take her seat. In 1919 and 1920, both Lady Astor and Margaret Wintringham won seats for the Conservatives and Liberals respectively by succeeding their husband's seats. Labour swept to power in 1924. Astor's proposal to form a women's party in 1929 was unsuccessful. Women gained considerable electoral experience over the next few years as a series of minority governments ensured almost annual elections. Close affiliation with Labour also proved to be a problem for the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship (NUSEC), which had little support in the Conservative party. However, their persistence with Prime Minister
Stanley Baldwin Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley (3 August 186714 December 1947), was a British statesman and Conservative politician who was prominent in the political leadership of the United Kingdom between the world wars. He was prime ministe ...
was rewarded with the passage of the
Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928 The Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928 ( 18 & 19 Geo. 5. c. 12) was an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. This act expanded on the Representation of the People Act 1918 ( 7 & 8 Geo. 5. c. 64) which had given som ...
. European women received the vote in
Finland Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It borders Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bothnia to the west and the Gulf of Finland to the south, ...
(that time still an autonomous state under Czar Russia) in 1906, in
Denmark Denmark is a Nordic countries, Nordic country in Northern Europe. It is the metropole and most populous constituent of the Kingdom of Denmark,, . also known as the Danish Realm, a constitutionally unitary state that includes the Autonomous a ...
and
Iceland Iceland is a Nordic countries, Nordic island country between the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between North America and Europe. It is culturally and politically linked with Europe and is the regi ...
in 1915 (full in 1919), the
Russian Republic The Russian Republic,. referred to as the Russian Democratic Federative Republic in the 1918 Constitution, was a short-lived state which controlled, ''de jure'', the territory of the former Russian Empire after its proclamation by the Rus ...
in 1917,
Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...
,
Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...
and
Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...
in 1918, many countries including the
Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...
in 1919,
Czechoslovakia Czechoslovakia ( ; Czech language, Czech and , ''Česko-Slovensko'') was a landlocked country in Central Europe, created in 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary. In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland beca ...
(today
Czech Republic The Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, and historically known as Bohemia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the south ...
and
Slovakia Slovakia, officially the Slovak Republic, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the west, and the Czech Republic to the northwest. Slovakia's m ...
) in 1920, and
Turkey Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a country mainly located in Anatolia in West Asia, with a relatively small part called East Thrace in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia (country), Georgia, Armen ...
and
South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...
in 1930. French women did not receive the vote until 1945.
Liechtenstein Liechtenstein (, ; ; ), officially the Principality of Liechtenstein ( ), is a Landlocked country#Doubly landlocked, doubly landlocked Swiss Standard German, German-speaking microstate in the Central European Alps, between Austria in the east ...
was one of the last countries, in 1984. After French women were given the right to vote in 1945, two women's organizations were founded in the French colony of
Martinique Martinique ( ; or ; Kalinago language, Kalinago: or ) is an island in the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies, in the eastern Caribbean Sea. It was previously known as Iguanacaera which translates to iguana island in Carib language, Kariʼn ...
. ''Le Rassemblement féminin'' and ''l'Union des femmes de la Martinique'' both had the goal of encouraging women to vote in the upcoming elections. While ''l'Union des femmes de la Martinique,'' founded by Jeanne Lero was influenced by beliefs, ''Le Rassemblement féminin,'' founded by Paulette Nardal, claimed to not support any particular political party and only encouraged women to take political action in order to create social change.


Social reform

The political change did not immediately change social circumstances. With the economic recession, women were the most vulnerable sector of the workforce. Some women who held jobs prior to the war were obliged to forfeit them to returning soldiers, and others were excessed. With limited franchise, the UK
National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies The National Union of Women Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), also known as the ''suffragists'' (not to be confused with the suffragettes) was an organisation founded in 1897 of women's suffrage societies around the United Kingdom. In March 1919 it w ...
(NUWSS) pivoted into a new organization, the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship (NUSEC), which still advocated for equality in franchise, but extended its scope to examine equality in social and economic areas. Legislative reform was sought for discriminatory laws (e.g., family law and
prostitution Prostitution is a type of sex work that involves engaging in sexual activity in exchange for payment. The definition of "sexual activity" varies, and is often defined as an activity requiring physical contact (e.g., sexual intercourse, no ...
) and over the differences between ''equality'' and ''equity'', the accommodations that would allow women to overcome barriers to fulfillment (known in later years as the "equality vs. difference conundrum"). Eleanor Rathbone, who became a British Member of Parliament in 1929, succeeded Millicent Garrett as president of NUSEC in 1919. She expressed the critical need for consideration of ''difference'' in gender relationships as "what women need to fulfill the potentialities of their own natures". The 1924 Labour government's social reforms created a formal split, as a splinter group of strict egalitarians formed the Open Door Council in May 1926. This eventually became an international movement, and continued until 1965. Other important social legislation of this period included the
Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 Sex is the biological trait that determines whether a sexual reproduction, sexually reproducing organism produces male or female gametes. During sexual reproduction, a male and a female gamete fuse to form a zygote, which develops into an o ...
(which opened professions to women), and the Matrimonial Causes Act 1923. In 1932, NUSEC separated advocacy from education, and continued the former activities as the National Council for Equal Citizenship and the latter as the
Townswomen's Guild Members representing their Federation at the 2009 AGM in Birmingham The Townswomen's Guild (TG) is a British women's organisation. There are approximately 30,000 members, 706 branches and 77 Federations throughout England, Scotland, Wales and N ...
. The council continued until the end of the
Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
.


Reproductive rights

British laws prevented feminists from discussing and addressing reproductive rights.
Annie Besant Annie Besant (; Wood; 1 October 1847 – 20 September 1933) was an English socialist, Theosophy (Blavatskian), theosophist, freemason, women's rights and Home Rule activist, educationist and campaigner for Indian nationalism. She was an arden ...
was tried under the Obscene Publications Act 1857 in 1877 for publishing Charles Knowlton's '' Fruits of Philosophy'', a work on family planning. Knowlton had previously been convicted in the United States. She and her colleague
Charles Bradlaugh Charles Bradlaugh (; 26 September 1833 – 30 January 1891) was an English political activist and atheist. He founded the National Secular Society in 1866, 15 years after George Holyoake had coined the term "secularism" in 1851. In 1880, Br ...
were convicted but acquitted on appeal. The subsequent publicity resulted in a decline in the UK's birth rate. Besant later wrote '' The Law of Population''. In America,
Margaret Sanger Margaret Sanger ( Higgins; September 14, 1879September 6, 1966) was an American birth control activist, sex educator, writer, and nurse. She opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, founded Planned Parenthood, and was instr ...
was prosecuted for her book ''Family Limitation'' under the Comstock Act in 1914, and fled to Britain until it was safe to return. Sanger's work was prosecuted in Britain. She met
Marie Stopes Marie Charlotte Carmichael Stopes (15 October 1880 – 2 October 1958) was a British author, palaeobotanist and campaigner for Eugenic feminism, eugenics and women's rights. She made significant contributions to plant palaeontology and co ...
in Britain, who was never prosecuted but regularly denounced for her promotion of birth control. In 1917, Sanger started the '' Birth Control Review''. In 1926, Sanger gave a lecture on birth control to the women's auxiliary of the Ku Klux Klan in Silver Lake, New Jersey, which she referred to as a "weird experience". The establishment of the Abortion Law Reform Association in 1936 was even more controversial. The British penalty for
abortion Abortion is the early termination of a pregnancy by removal or expulsion of an embryo or fetus. Abortions that occur without intervention are known as miscarriages or "spontaneous abortions", and occur in roughly 30–40% of all pregnan ...
had been reduced from execution to life imprisonment by the
Offences against the Person Act 1861 The Offences against the Person Act 1861 ( 24 & 25 Vict. c. 100) is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that consolidated provisions related to offences against the person (an expression which, in particular, includes offences of ...
, although some exceptions were allowed in the
Infant Life (Preservation) Act 1929 The Infant Life (Preservation) Act 1929 ( 19 & 20 Geo. 5. c. 34) is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that created the offence of child destruction. The act retains three sections, the most substantive legal changes of which are i ...
. Following Aleck Bourne's prosecution in 1938, the 1939 Birkett Committee made recommendations for reform that were set aside at the Second World War's outbreak, along with many other women's issues. In the Netherlands, Aletta H. Jacobs, the first Dutch female doctor, and Wilhelmina Drucker led discussion and action for reproductive rights. Jacobs imported diaphragms from Germany and distributed them to poor women for free.


1940s

In most front line countries, women volunteered or were conscripted for various duties in support of the national war effort. In Britain, women were drafted and assigned to industrial jobs or to non-combat military service. The British services enrolled 460,000 women. The largest service,
Auxiliary Territorial Service The Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS; often pronounced as an acronym) was the women's branch of the British Army during the World War II, Second World War. It was formed on 9 September 1938, initially as a women's voluntary service, and existe ...
, had a maximum of 213,000 women enrolled, many of whom served in anti-aircraft gun combat roles. In many countries, including Germany and the Soviet Union, women volunteered or were conscripted. In Germany, women volunteered in the
League of German Girls The League of German Girls or the Band of German Maidens (, abbreviated as BDM) was the girls' wing of the Nazi Party youth movement, the Hitler Youth. It was the only legal female youth organization in Nazi Germany. At first, the League consis ...
and assisted the Luftwaffe as anti-aircraft gunners, or as guerrilla fighters in
Werwolf ''Werwolf'' (, German for "werewolf") was a Nazi plan which began development in 1944, to create a resistance force which would operate behind enemy lines as the Allies advanced through Germany in parallel with the ''Wehrmacht'' fighting in ...
units behind Allied lines. In the Soviet Union, about 820,000 women served in the military as medics, radio operators, truck drivers, snipers, combat pilots, and junior commanding officers. Many American women retained their domestic chores and often added a paid job, especially one related to a war industry. Much more so than in the previous war, large numbers of women were hired for unskilled or semi-skilled jobs in munitions, and barriers against married women taking jobs were eased. The popular
Rosie the Riveter Rosie the Riveter is an allegorical cultural icon in the United States who represents the women who worked in factories and shipyards during World War II, many of whom produced munitions and war supplies. These women sometimes took entirely n ...
icon became a symbol for a generation of American working women. In addition, some 300,000 women served in U.S. military uniform with organizations such as Women's Army Corps and WAVES. With many young men gone, sports organizers tried to set up professional women's teams, such as the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which closed after the war. After the war, most munitions plants closed, and civilian plants replaced their temporary female workers with returning veterans, who had priority.


Second wave

"Second-wave feminism" identifies a period of feminist activity from the early 1960s through the late 1980s that saw cultural and political inequalities as inextricably linked. The movement encouraged women to understand aspects of their personal lives as deeply politicized and reflective of a Hegemonic masculinity, sexist power structure. As first-wave feminists focused on absolute rights such as suffrage, second-wave feminists focused on other cultural equality issues, such as ending discrimination.Freedman, Estelle B., ''No Turning Back: The History of Feminism and the Future of Women'' (London: Ballantine Books, 2003).


Betty Friedan, ''The Feminine Mystique'', and Women's Liberation

A landmark feminist work appeared in 1949 called ''The Second Sex'', a book written by
Simone de Beauvoir Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir (, ; ; 9 January 1908 – 14 April 1986) was a French existentialist philosopher, writer, social theorist, and feminist activist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, nor was she ...
. The critical text pertained to every facet of what would later be defined as gender discourse. Beauvoir goes into detail on the treatment of women throughout entire history of the world and analyses the modes of oppression enforced by patriarchy and then critiques it. In 1963, Betty Friedan's exposé ''The Feminine Mystique'' became the voice for the discontent and disorientation women felt in being shunted into homemaking positions after their college graduations. In the book, Friedan explored the roots of the change in women's roles from essential workforce during World War II to homebound housewife and mother after the war, and assessed the forces that drove this change in perception of women's roles. The expression "Women's Liberation" has been used to refer to feminism throughout history. "Liberation" has been associated with feminist aspirations since 1895, and appears in the context of "women's liberation" in Simone de Beauvoir's 1949 ''The Second Sex'', which appeared in English translation in 1953. The phrase "women's liberation" was first used in 1964,Sarachild, Kathie. "Consciousness-Raising: A Radical Weapon", in Sarachild, K, Hanisch, C., Levine, F., Leon, B., Price, C. (eds), ''Feminist Revolution''. NY: Random House, 1978, pp. 144-50. in print in 1966, though the French equivalent, ''libération des femmes'', occurred as far back as 1911. "Women's liberation" was in use at the 1967 American Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) convention, which held a panel discussion on the topic. In 1968, the term "Women's Liberation Front" appeared in ''Ramparts (magazine), Ramparts'' magazine, and began to refer to the whole women's movement. In Chicago, women disillusioned with the New Left met separately in 1967, and published ''Voice of the Women's Liberation Movement'' in March 1968. When the Miss America pageant took place in Atlantic City in September 1968, the media referred to the resulting demonstrations as "Women's Liberation". The Chicago Women's Liberation Union was formed in 1969. Similar groups with similar titles appeared in many parts of the United States. Bra-burning, although fictional, became associated with the movement, and the media coined other terms such as "libber". "Women's Liberation" persisted over the other rival terms for the new feminism, captured the popular imagination, and has endured alongside the older term "Feminist movement, Women's Movement". This time was marked by increased female enrolment in higher education, the establishment of academic women's studies courses and departments, and feminist ideology in other related fields, such as politics, sociology, history, and literature. This academic shift in interests questioned the status quo, and its standards and authority. The rise of the Women's Liberation movement revealed "multiple feminisms", or different underlying feminist lenses, due to the diverse origins from which groups had coalesced and intersected, and the complexity and contentiousness of the issues involved. bell hooks is noted as a prominent critic of the movement for its lack of voice given to the most oppressed women, its lack of emphasis on the inequalities of race and class, and its distance from the issues that divide women. Helen Reddy's "I Am Woman", John Lennon's "Woman is the Nigger of the World" and Yoko Ono's "Josei Joui Banzai" were 70s feminist songs. Feminist's wrong protest against rock music movement was started in Los Angeles, where Women Against Pornography#Similar groups, Women Against Violence Against Women was founded in 1976; they campaigned against the Rolling Stones' 1976 album ''Black and Blue''.


Feminist writing

The publication of Betty Friedan's ''The Feminine Mystique'' has been credited with beginning the so-called "second wave" of feminist activism, during which time feminist writers furthered conversations about women's political and sexual concerns. Examples include Gloria Steinem's Ms. (magazine), ''Ms.'' magazine and Kate Millett's ''Sexual Politics''. Millett's bleak survey of male writers, their attitudes and biases, to demonstrate that sex is politics, and politics is power imbalance in relationships. Shulamith Firestone's ''The Dialectic of Sex'' described a feminist revolution based in Marxism, referenced as the "sex war." Considering the debates over patriarchy, she claimed that male domination dated to "back beyond recorded history to the animal kingdom itself." Germaine Greer's ''The Female Eunuch'', Sheila Rowbotham's ''Women's Liberation and the New Politics'', and Juliet Mitchell's ''Woman's Estate'' represent the English perspective. Mitchell argued that the movement should be seen as an international phenomenon with different manifestations based on local culture. British women drew on left-wing politics and organized small local discussion groups, partly through the London Women's Liberation Workshop and its publications, ''Shrew'' and the LWLW Newsletter. Although there were marches, the focus was on consciousness-raising, or political activism intended to bring a cause or condition to a wider audience.Echols, Alice. ''Daring to be bad: Radical feminism in America 1967-1975'', University of Minnesota, 1989. Kathie Sarachild of Redstockings described its function as such that women would "find what they thought was an individual dilemma is social predicament". US women's writing included works such as Susan Brownmiller's 1975 ''Against Our Will,'' which introduced an explicit agenda against male violence, specifically male sexual violence, in a treatise on rape. Her work has been referred to as "groundbreaking" due to its framing of rape as a social problem; it also had a fair number of critics, primarily from feminists of color, who took issue with Brownmiller's approach to race. Brownmiller's other major book, ''In Our Time (Brownmiller book), In Our Time'' (2000), is a history of women's liberation. In Academic circles, feminist theology was a growing interest. Phyllis Trible wrote extensively throughout the 1970s to critique biblical interpretation of the time, using a type of critique known as Rhetorical criticism. Trible's analysis of biblical text seeks to explain that the bible itself is not sexist, but that it is centuries of sexism in societies that have produced this narrative.


Feminist views on pornography

Susan Griffin was one of the first feminists to write on pornography's implications in her 1981 ''Pornography and Silence''. Beyond Brownmiller and Griffin's positions, Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin influenced debates and activism around pornography and prostitution, particularly at the Supreme Court of Canada. MacKinnon, a lawyer, has stated, "To be about to be raped is to be gender female in the process of going about life as usual." She explained sexual harassment by saying that it "doesn't mean that they [harassers] all want to fuck us, they just want to hurt us, dominate us, and control us, and that is fucking us." According to Pauline B. Bart, some people see radical feminism as the only movement that truly expresses the pain of being a woman in an unequal society, as it portrays that reality with the experiences of the battered and violated, which they claim to be the norm. Critics, including some feminists, civil libertarians, and jurists, have found this position uncomfortable and alienating. This approach has evolved to transform the research and perspective on rape from an individual experience into a social problem.


Third wave

Third-wave feminism began in the early 1990s in response to what young women perceived as failures of the Second-wave feminism, second-wave. It also responds to the backlash against the second-wave's initiatives and movements. Third-wave feminism seeks to challenge or avoid second-wave "Essentialism, essentialist" definitions of femininity, which over-emphasized the experiences of white, upper-middle-class women. A Post-structuralism, post-structuralist interpretation of gender and sexuality, or an understanding of gender as outside binary maleness and femaleness, is central to much of the third wave's ideology. Third-wave feminists often describe "micropolitics", and challenge second-wave paradigms about whether actions are unilaterally good for females.Henry, Astrid, ''Not My Mother's Sister: Generational Conflict and Third-Wave Feminism'' (Indiana University Press, 2003), Gillis, Stacy, Gillian Howie & Rebecca Munford (eds), ''Third Wave Feminism: A Critical Exploration'' (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), Faludi, Susan, ''Backlash: The Undeclared War Against Women'' (Vintage, 1993), These aspects of third-wave feminism arose in the mid-1980s. Feminist leaders rooted in the second wave like Gloria Anzaldúa, bell hooks, Chela Sandoval, Cherríe Moraga, Audre Lorde, Luisa Accati, Maxine Hong Kingston, and many other feminists of color, called for a new subjectivity in feminist voice. They wanted prominent feminist thought to consider race-related subjectivities. This focus on the intersection between race and gender remained prominent through the 1991 Hill–Thomas hearings, but began to shift with the Freedom Ride 1992, a drive to register voters in poor minority communities whose rhetoric intended to rally young feminists. For many, the rallying of the young is the common link within third-wave feminism.


Sexual politics

Lesbianism during the second wave was visible within and without feminism. Lesbians felt sidelined by both gay liberation and women's liberation, where they were referred to by Betty Friedan as a "lavender menace", provoking "The Woman-Identified Woman," a 1970 manifesto from the Radicalesbians that put lesbian women at the forefront of the liberation movement. A few years later, Jill Johnston's 1973 ''Lesbian Nation: The Feminist Solution'' argued for lesbian separatism, a practice by which lesbian women would separate themselves from the rest of society. In reproductive rights, feminists sought the right to contraceptives (i.e., birth control), some of which were widely restricted in the US until the late 1960s and through the 1970s; the combined oral contraceptive pill, birth control pill, for example, was primarily available only to married women until the mid 1970s, though other women did find ways to get the pill anyhow. Access to
abortion Abortion is the early termination of a pregnancy by removal or expulsion of an embryo or fetus. Abortions that occur without intervention are known as miscarriages or "spontaneous abortions", and occur in roughly 30–40% of all pregnan ...
was also widely demanded so as to increase women's economic independence and bodily autonomy, but was more difficult to secure due to existing, deep societal divisions over the issue. Shulamith Firestone, active during the second wave of feminism, argued reproductive technology is connected to reproductive rights. Firestone believed in the enhancement of technologically concerning reproduction, in order to eliminate the obligation for women to reproduce and end oppression and inequality against them. Enhancing technology to empower women and abolish the gender hierarchy are the main focuses of a newer developing philosophy in feminism, known as cyberfeminism. Cyberfeminism has strong ties to reproductive rights and technology. Third-wave feminists also fought to hasten social acceptance of female sexual freedom. As societal norms allowed men to have multiple sexual partners without rebuke, feminists sought sexual equality for that freedom and encouraged "sexual liberation" for women, including sex for pleasure with multiple partners, if desired.


Global feminism


= UN conferences on women

= In 1946, the United Nations established a United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, Commission on the Status of Women, which later joined the United Nations Economic and Social Council, UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). In 1948, the UN issued its Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which protects "the equal rights of men and women", and addressed both equality and equity. Starting with the 1975 World Conference of the International Women's Year in Mexico City as part of their Decade for Women (1975–1985), the UN has held a series of world conferences on women's issues. These conferences have worldwide female representation and provide considerable opportunity to advance women's rights. They also illustrate deep cultural divisions and disagreement on universal principles, as evidenced by the successive Copenhagen (1980) and Nairobi (1985) conferences. Examples of such intrafeminism divisions have included disparities between economic development, attitudes towards forms of oppression, the definition of feminism, and stances on homosexuality, Female genital cutting, female circumcision, and population control. The Nairobi convention revealed a less monolithic feminism that "constitutes the political expression of the concerns and interests of women from different regions, classes, nationalities, and ethnic backgrounds. There is and must be a diversity of feminisms, responsive to the different needs and concerns of women, and defined by them for themselves. This diversity builds on a common opposition to gender oppression and hierarchy which, however, is only the first step in articulating and acting upon a political agenda." The fourth conference was held in Beijing in 1995, where the Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing Platform for Action was signed. This included a commitment to achieve "gender equality and the empowerment of women" through "gender mainstreaming", or letting women and men "experience equal conditions for realising their full human rights, and have the opportunity to contribute and benefit from national, political, economic, social and cultural development".


= Bridging East and West

= "The definitional moment of third-wave feminism has been theorized as proceeding from critiques of the white women's movement that were initiated by women of color, as well as from the many instances of coalition work undertaken by U.S. third world feminists" Third world feminists since the 1980s have been critics of class-bias, racism, and Eurocentrism among women and feminists, and theories of multiplicity and difference given by these feminists such as Sandoval, Minh-ha, and Mohanty have enabled young feminists to dismantle the idea of monolithic feminism. They have empowered them to recognize the differences and declare multiple identities of being female, despite constantly feeling caught between modernity and tradition. Even though Asian women found it difficult to relate completely with the western women's white problems, they related much with the women of color, and thus remolded it and built a bridge between both halves of feminism, the eastern and western, via interconnectedness among women around the world. They adapted and borrowed the 'western' ideas of feminism and women in the west incorporated the effects of women's movements in other parts of the world, while reinventing itself. Asian feminists acknowledged the need of recognizing multiple sources of domination in women's lives all across the world, refused to universalize women's experience as one, and instead recognized the differences among them due to different social locations. They claimed that although academic feminism introduced them to the idea of feminism, it failed to bring them closer to the sisters and mothers in their lives, and rather took them further away. Some have also argued that many goals of western feminism are not enough to assess women's progress in Asia because they are not necessarily relevant or exportable across the boundaries. Thus, they redefined it as one that drew upon their heritage, history, and experiences. As Grewal puts it, "These transnational feminist scholars enable us to rethink the way we construct and write the history of feminists in national and transnational contexts. Seeking to articulate transnational connections among women, they have suggested ways to move beyond constructed oppositions without ignoring the histories that informed these conflicts or the valid concerns about power relations that have represented or structured the conflicts up to this point."


Fourth wave

Fourth-wave feminism Fourth-wave feminism is a feminist movement that began around 2012 and is characterized by a focus on the empowerment of women, the use of internet tools, and intersectionality. According to Rosemary Clark-Parsons, digital platforms have allow ...
is a recent development within the feminist movement. Jennifer Baumgardner identifies fourth-wave feminism as starting in 2008 and continuing into the present day. Kira Cochrane, author of '' All the Rebel Women: The Rise of the Fourth Wave of Feminism'', defines fourth-wave feminism as a movement that is connected through technology. Researcher Diana Diamond defines fourth-wave feminism as a movement that "combines politics, psychology, and spirituality in an overarching vision of change."


Arguments for a new wave

In 2005, Pythia Peay first argued for the existence of a fourth wave of feminism, combining justice with thealogy, religious spirituality. According to Jennifer Baumgardner in 2011, a fourth wave, incorporating online resources such as social media, may have begun in 2008, inspired partly by Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day, Take Our Daughters to Work Days. This fourth wave in turn has inspired or been associated with: the Doula Project for children's services; post-abortion talk lines; pursuit of reproductive justice; plus-size clothing, plus-size fashion support; support for transgender rights; male feminism; sex work acceptance; and developing media including Feministing, Racialicious, blogs, and Twitter campaigns. According to Kira Cochrane, a fourth wave had appeared in the U.K. and several other nations by 2012–13. It focused on: sexual inequality as manifested in "street harassment, sexual harassment, workplace discrimination[,] ... body-shaming"; Cochrane is also the author of ''All the Rebel Women: The Rise of the Fourth Wave of Feminism'' (Guardian Shorts Originals series ebook 2013). media images, "online misogyny", "assault[s] on public transport"; on
intersectionality Intersectionality is an analytical framework for understanding how groups' and individuals' social and political identities result in unique combinations of discrimination and privilege. Examples of these intersecting and overlapping factor ...
; on social media technology for communication and online petitioning for organizing; and on the perception, inherited from prior waves, that individual experiences are shared and thus can have political solutions. Cochrane identified as fourth wave such organizations and websites as the Everyday Sexism Project and Kat Banyard, UK Feminista; and events such as Reclaim the Night, One Billion Rising, and "a Lose the Lads' mags protest", where "many of [the leaders] ... are in their teens and 20s". In 2014, Betty Dodson, who is also acknowledged as one of the leaders of the early 1980s pro-sex feminist movement, expressed that she considers herself a fourth wave feminist. Dodson expressed that the previous waves of feminist were banal and anti-sexual, which is why she has chosen to look at a new stance of feminism, fourth wave feminism. In 2014, Dodson worked with women to discover their sexual desires through masturbation. Dodson says her work has gained a fresh lease of life with a new audience of young, successful women who have never had an orgasm. This includes fourth-wave feminists - those rejecting the anti-pleasure stance they believe third-wave feminists stand for. In 2014, Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett and Holly Baxter released their book, ''The Vagenda.'' The authors of the book both consider themselves fourth wave feminists. Like their website "The Vagenda", their book aims to flag and debunk the stereotypes of femininity promoted by the mainstream women's press. One reviewer of the book has expressed disappointment with ''The Vagenda'', saying that instead of being the "call to arms for young women" that it purports to be, it reads like a joyless dissertation detailing "everything bad the media has ever done to women."


The Everyday Sexism Project

The Everyday Sexism Project began as a social media campaign on 16 April 2012 by Laura Bates, a British feminist writer. The aim of the site was to document everyday examples of sexism as reported by contributors around the world. Bates established the Everyday Sexism Project as an open forum where women could post their experiences of harassment. Bates explains the Everyday Sexism Project's goal, ""The project was never about solving sexism. It was about getting people to take the first step of just realising there is a problem that needs to be fixed." The website was such a success that Bates decided to write and publish a book, ''Everyday Sexism'', which further emphasizes the importance of having this type of online forum for women. The book provides unique insight into the vibrant movement of the upcoming fourth wave and the untold stories that women shared through the Everyday Sexism Project.


Click! The Ongoing Feminist Revolution

In November 2015, a group of historians working with Clio Visualizing Histor

launched ''Click! The Ongoing Feminist Revolution.

This digital history exhibit examines the history of American feminism from the era of World War Two to the present. The exhibit has three major sections: Politics and Social Movements; Body and Health; and Workplace and Family. There are also interactive timelines linking to a vast array of sources documenting the history of American feminism and providing information about current feminist activism.


Criticisms of the wave metaphor

In the 1960s, feminists described their movements as the "second wave" of feminism. As the second wave emerges, the importance of this new wave was to revisit that the current women's right had a venerable past. This wave focused on the idea that these movements were a long tradition of activism and during the second wave, feminists began to rewrite U.S. history through recognizing that the suffrage movement was part of the nineteenth century movement around women's issues. Presently, many contributions about the Second Wave Feminism was correlated with "hegemonic feminism". This feminism views sexism as the main oppression and it was mainly led by white individuals who "marginalized the activism and world views of women of color". Women of color and white antiracist women clarify the rise of multiracial feminism through telling the history of the Second Wave feminism. One of the earlier feminist organizations of the Second Wave was a Chicana group named Hijas de Cuauntemoc (1971) which was named after an underground newspaper written by women during the 1910 Mexican Revolution. Multiple other feminist organizations that were created in the early 1970s with Black, Asian, Latina, and Native American women have created a nationalist tradition of sending out a message that there is a need for people of color-led, independent organizations. During the 1990s, the United States feminist activity that was present in the 1960s through the 1980s was no longer expressed. The wave metaphor for the Second Wave showed the 1960s movement as anything other than a historical situation, and showed that the nineteenth century movement was a bigger deal and had more impact on history than what was taught. As many pondered on what state was feminism presently in, one idea emerged in the early 1990s as the "third wave". As emerging from the Second Wave and onto the Third Wave, the wave metaphor has reached its usefulness. Individuals are more aware of the significance the nineteenth century had on women's movement and are more aware of the emergence the 1960s had from their long struggle regarding women's issues.


National histories of feminism


France

The 18th century French Revolution's focus on Liberté, égalité, fraternité, ''égalité'' (equality) extended to the inequities faced by French women. The writer Olympe de Gouges amended the 1791
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (), set by France's National Constituent Assembly in 1789, is a human and civil rights document from the French Revolution; the French title can be translated in the modern era as "Decl ...
into the
Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen The Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen (), also known as the Declaration of the Rights of Woman, was written on 14 September 1791 by French activist, Feminism in France, feminist, and playwright Olympe de Gouges in res ...
, where she argued that women accountable to the law must also bear equal responsibility under the law. She also addressed marriage as a social contract between equals and attacked women's reliance on beauty and charm as a form of slavery. Two years later, she was executed by guillotine. The 19th century, conservative, post-Revolution France was inhospitable for feminist ideas, as expressed in the counter-revolutionary writings on the role of women by Joseph de Maistre and Louis Gabriel Ambroise de Bonald, Viscount Louis de Bonald. Advancement came mid-century under the
1848 revolution The revolutions of 1848, known in some countries as the springtime of the peoples or the springtime of nations, were a series of revolutions throughout Europe over the course of more than one year, from 1848 to 1849. It remains the most widespre ...
and the proclamation of the Second Republic, which introduced male suffrage amid hopes that similar benefits would apply to women. Although the Utopian Charles Fourier is considered a feminist writer of this period, his influence was minimal at the time. With the fall of the conservative Louis-Philippe in 1848, feminist hopes were raised, as in 1790. Movement newspapers and organizations appeared, such as Eugénie Niboyet's ''La Voix des Femmes (France, 1848), La Voix des Femmes'' (''The Women's Voice''), the first feminist daily newspaper in France. Niboyet was a Protestant who had adopted Saint-Simonianism, and ''La Voix'' attracted other women from that movement, including the seamstress Jeanne Deroin and the primary schoolteacher Pauline Roland. Unsuccessful attempts were also made to recruit George Sand. Feminism was treated as a threat due to its ties with socialism, which was scrutinized since the Revolution. Deroin and Roland were both arrested, tried, and imprisoned in 1849. With the emergence of a new, more conservative government in 1852, feminism would have to wait until the Third French Republic. While the word ''féminisme'' previously existed to describe the qualities of women, the word ''féministe'' was coined in 1872 by Alexandre Dumas fils, Alexandre Dumas ''fils'' to refer to liberated women. The Groupe Français d'Etudes Féministes were women intellectuals at the beginning of the 20th century who translated part of Johann Jakob Bachofen, Bachofen's canon into French and campaigned for the family law reform. In 1905, they founded ''L'entente'', which published articles on women's history, and became the focus for the intellectual avant-garde. It advocated for women's entry into higher education and the male-dominated professions. Meanwhile, the Parti Socialiste Féminin socialist feminists, adopted a Marxist version of matriarchy. Like the Groupe Français, they toiled for a new age of equality, not for a return to prehistoric models of matriarchy. French feminism of the late 20th century is mainly associated with psychoanalytic feminist theory, particularly the work of Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, and Hélène Cixous.


Germany

Modern feminism in
Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...
began during the Wilhelmine period (1888–1918) with feminists pressuring a range of traditional institutions, from universities to government, to open their doors to women. The organized German women's movement is widely attributed to writer and feminist Louise Otto-Peters (1819–1895). This movement culminated in
women's suffrage Women's suffrage is the women's rights, right of women to Suffrage, vote in elections. Several instances occurred in recent centuries where women were selectively given, then stripped of, the right to vote. In Sweden, conditional women's suffra ...
in 1919. Later waves of feminists continued to ask for legal and social equality in public and family life. Alice Schwarzer is the most prominent contemporary German feminist.


Iran

The Iranian women's rights movement first emerged some time after the Iranian Constitutional Revolution, in the year in which the first women's journal was published, 1910. The status of women deteriorated after the 1979 Iranian Revolution. The movement later grew again under feminist figures such as Bibi Khanoom Astarabadi, Touba Azmoudeh, Sediqeh Dowlatabadi, Mohtaram Eskandari, Roshank No'doost, Afaq Parsa, Fakhr ozma Arghoun, Shahnaz Azad, Noor-ol-Hoda Mangeneh, Zandokht Shirazi, Maryam Amid (Mariam Mozayen-ol Sadat). In 1992, Shahla Sherkat founded ''Zanan'' (''Women'') magazine, which covered Iranian women's concerns and tested political boundaries with edgy reportage on reform politics, domestic abuse, and sex. It is the most important Iranian women's journal published after the Iranian revolution. It systematically criticized the Islamic legal code and argued that gender equality is Islamic and religious literature had been misread and misappropriated by misogynists. Mehangiz Kar, Shahla Lahiji, and Shahla Sherkat, the editor of ''Zanan'', lead the debate on women's rights and demanded reforms. On August 27, 2006, the One Million Signatures Iranian women's rights campaign was started. It aims to end legal discrimination against women in Iranian laws by collecting a million signatures. The campaign supporters include many Iranian women's rights activists, international activists, and List of Nobel laureates, Nobel laureates. The most important post-revolution feminist figures are Mehrangiz Kar, Azam Taleghani, Shahla Sherkat, Parvin Ardalan, Noushin Ahmadi khorasani, and Shadi Sadr.


Egypt

In 1899, Qasim Amin, considered the "father" of Arab feminism, wrote ''The Liberation of Women'', which argued for legal and social reforms for women. Hoda Shaarawi founded the Egyptian Feminist Union in 1923 and became its president and a symbol of the Arab women's rights movement. Arab feminism was closely connected with Arab nationalism. In 1956, President Gamal Abdel Nasser's government initiated "state feminism", which outlawed gender-based discrimination and granted women's suffrage. Despite these reforms, "state feminism" blocked feminist political activism and brought an end to the first-wave feminist movement in Egypt. During Anwar Sadat's presidency, his wife, Jehan Sadat, publicly advocated for expansion of women's rights, though Egyptian policy and society was in retreat from women's equality with the new Islamist movement and growing conservatism. However, writers such as Al Ghazali Harb, for example, argued that women's full equality is an important part of Islam. This position formed a new feminist movement, Islamic feminism, which is still active today.


India

A new generation of Indian feminists emerged following global feminism. Indian women have greater independence from increased access to higher education and control over their reproductive rights.Chaudhuri, Maitrayee, ''Feminism in India'' (Zed, 2005) Medha Patkar, Madhu Kishwar, and Brinda Karat are feminist social workers and politicians who advocate for women's rights in post-independence India. Writers such as Amrita Pritam, Sarojini Sahoo, and Kusum Ansal advocate for feminist ideas in Indian languages. Rajeshwari Sunder Rajan, Leela Kasturi, and Vidyut Bhagat are Indian feminist essayists and critics writing in English.


China

Feminism in China began in the late Qing Dynasty, Qing period as Chinese society re-evaluated traditional and Confucian values such as foot binding and gender segregation, and began to reject traditional gender ideas as hindering progress towards modernization. During the 1898 Hundred Days' Reform, reformers called for women's education, gender equality, and the end of foot binding. Female reformers formed the first Chinese women's society, the Society for the Diffusion of Knowledge among Chinese Women (''Nüxuehui''). After the Qing dynasty's collapse, women's liberation became a goal of the May Fourth Movement and the New Culture Movement. Later, the Chinese Communist Revolution adopted women's liberation as one of its aims and promoted women's equality, especially regarding women's participation in the workforce. After the revolution and progress in integrating women into the workforce, the Chinese Communist Party claimed to have successfully achieved women's liberation, and women's inequality was no longer seen as a problem.Dooling, Amy D. ''Women's literary feminism in 20th-century China'', Macmillan, 2005, , Second- and third-wave feminism in China was characterized by a re-examination of women's roles during the reform movements of the early 20th century and the ways in which feminism was adopted by those various movements in order to achieve their goals. Later and current feminists have questioned whether gender equality has actually been fully achieved, and discuss current gender problems, such as the large Missing women of Asia, gender disparity in the population.


Japan

Japanese feminism as an organized political movement dates back to the early years of the 20th century when Kato Shidzue pushed for contraception, birth control availability as part of a broad spectrum of progressivism, progressive reforms. Shidzue went on to serve in the National Diet of Japan, National Diet following the defeat of Japan in World War II and the promulgation of the Constitution of Japan, Peace Constitution by US forces.Buckley, Susan, ''Broken Silence: Voices of Japanese Feminism'' (University of California Press, 1997), Other figures such as Fumiko Hayashi (author), Hayashi Fumiko and Ariyoshi Sawako illustrate the broad socialist ideologies of Japanese feminism that seeks to accomplish broad goals rather than celebrate the individual achievements of powerful women.Mackie, Vera, ''Feminism in Modern Japan Citizenship, Embodiment and Sexuality'' (Curtin University of Technology, 2003),


Norway

Norwegian feminism's political origins are in the
women's suffrage Women's suffrage is the women's rights, right of women to Suffrage, vote in elections. Several instances occurred in recent centuries where women were selectively given, then stripped of, the right to vote. In Sweden, conditional women's suffra ...
movement. Camilla Collett (1813–1895) is widely considered the first Norwegian feminist. Originating from a literary family, she wrote a novel and several articles on the difficulties facing women of her time, and, in particular, forced marriages. Amalie Skram (1846–1905), a Naturalism (literature), naturalist writer, also served as the women's voice.Andersen, Arlow W., ''Rough Road to Glory: The Norwegian-American Press Speaks Out on Public Affairs 1875 to 1925'' (Balch Institute Press, 1990). The Norwegian Association for Women's Rights was founded in 1884 by Gina Krog and Hagbart Berner. The organization raised issues related to women's rights to education and economic self-determination, and, above all, universal suffrage. The Norwegian Parliament passed the women's right to vote into law on June 11, 1913. Norway was the second country in Europe (after Finland) to have full suffrage for women.


Poland

The development of feminism in Poland (National Independence Day, re-recreated in modern times in 1918) and Polish territories has traditionally been divided into seven successive "waves".Łoch, Eugenia (ed.) 2001. ''Modernizm i feminizm. Postacie kobiece w literaturze polskiej i obcej''. Lublin: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu M.Curie-Skłodowskiej. Radical feminism emerged in 1920s Poland. Its chief representatives, Irena Krzywicka and Maria Morozowicz-Szczepkowska, advocated for women's personal, social, and legal independence from men. Krzywicka and Tadeusz Żeleński both promoted planned parenthood, sexual education, rights to divorce and abortion, and equality of sexes. Krzywicka published a series of articles in ''Wiadomości Literackie'' in which she protested against interference by the Roman Catholic Church in the intimate lives of Poles. After the Second World War, the Polish Communist state (established in 1948) forcefully promoted women's emancipation at home and at work. However, during Communist rule (until 1989), feminism in general and second-wave feminism in particular were practically absent. Although feminist texts were produced in the 1950s and afterwards, they were usually controlled and generated by the Communist state.Śleczka, Kazimierz, 1997. "Feminizm czy feminizmy". In: Zofia Gorczyńska, Sabina Kruszyńska, Irena Zakidalska (eds.). ''Płeć, kobieta, feminizm''. Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego. After the fall of Communism, the Polish government, dominated by Catholic political parties, introduced a ''de facto'' legal ban on abortions. Since then, some feminists have adopted argumentative strategies from the 1980s United States pro-choice movement, American pro-choice movement.


Histories of selected feminist issues


Feminist theory

The sexuality and gender historian Nancy Cott distinguishes between ''modern feminism'' and its antecedents, particularly the struggle for suffrage. She argues that in the two decades surrounding the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, Nineteenth Amendment's 1920 passage, the prior ''woman movement'' primarily concerned women as ''universalism, universal'' entities, whereas over this 20-year period, the movement prioritized social differentiation, attention to ''individuality'', and diversity. New issues dealt more with gender as a Social constructionism, social construct, gender identity, and relationships within and between genders. Politically, this represented a shift from an ideological alignment comfortable with the right, to one more radically associated with the left. In the immediate postwar period,
Simone de Beauvoir Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir (, ; ; 9 January 1908 – 14 April 1986) was a French existentialist philosopher, writer, social theorist, and feminist activist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, nor was she ...
opposed the "woman in the home" norm. She introduced an existentialist dimension to feminism with the publication of ''Le Deuxième Sexe'' (''The Second Sex'') in 1949. While less an activist than a philosopher and novelist, she signed one of the Mouvement de Libération des Femmes manifestos. The resurgence of feminist activism in the late 1960s was accompanied by an emerging literature of what might be considered female-associated issues, such as concerns for the earth, spirituality, and environmental activism.Marler, Joan. "The Myth of Universal Patriarchy: A Critical Response to Cynthia Eller's Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory". ''Feminist Theology'', Vol. 14, No. 2, 163-87 (2006). For an earlier version of this article, se
Marija Gimbutas
.
The atmosphere this created reignited the study of and debate on matricentricity as a rejection of Biological determinism, determinism, such as with Adrienne Rich in ''Of Woman Born'' and Marilyn French in ''Beyond Power''. For socialist feminists like Evelyn Reed, patriarchy held the properties of capitalism. Ann Taylor Allen describes the differences between the collective male pessimism of male intellectuals such as Ferdinand Tönnies, Max Weber, and Georg Simmel at the beginning of the 20th century, compared to the optimism of their female counterparts, whose contributions have largely been ignored by social historians of the era.Hughes, H. Stuart. ''Consciousness and Society: The Reorientation of European Social Thought, 1890–1930'', New York, 1958.


See also

* Coverture * Feminist history * History of brassieres *Lesbian erasure * List of suffragists and suffragettes * List of women's rights activists * List of women's organizations * Mujeres Libres * New Woman * Timeline of second-wave feminism * Timeline of women's suffrage * Timeline of women's rights (other than voting) * Victorian dress reform * Women's music * List of suffragists and suffragettes#Major suffrage organizations, Women's suffrage organizations * Women's rights in 2014 * 1975 Icelandic women's strike


References


Bibliography


General


Books

* Cott, Nancy F. ''The Bonds of Womanhood''. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977. * Cott, Nancy F. ''The Grounding of Modern Feminism''. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987. * Duby, George and Perrot, Michelle (eds). ''A History of Women in the West''. 5 vols. Harvard, 1992-4 ** I. ''From Ancient Goddesses to Christian Saints'' ** II. ''Silences of the Middle Ages'' ** III. ''Renaissance and the Enlightenment Paradoxes'' ** IV. ''Emerging Feminism from Revolution to World War'' ** V. ''Toward a Cultural Identity in the Twentieth Century'' * Ezell, Margaret J. M. ''Writing Women's Literary History''. Johns Hopkins University, 2006. 216 pp.  * Foot, Paul. ''The Vote: How it was won and how it was lost''. London: Viking, 2005 * Freedman, Estelle ''No Turning Back: The History of Feminism and the Future of Women'', Ballantine Books, 2002, * Fulford, Roger. ''Votes for Women''. London: Faber and Faber, 1957 * Jacob, Margaret C. ''The Enlightenment: A Brief History With Documents'', Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001, * Kramarae, Cheris and Paula Treichler. ''A Feminist Dictionary''. University of Illinois, 1997. * Lerner, Gerda. ''The Creation of Feminist Consciousness From the Middle Ages to Eighteen-seventy''. Oxford University Press, 1993 * McQuiston, Liz. ''Suffragettes and She-devils: Women's liberation and beyond''. London: Phaidon, 1997 * Mill, John Stuart. ''The Subjection of Women''. Okin, Susan M (ed.). Newhaven, CT: Yale, 1985 * Prince, Althea and Susan Silva-Wayne (eds). ''Feminisms and Womanisms: A Women's Studies Reader''. Women's Press, 2004. * Radical Women. ''The Radical Women Manifesto: Socialist Feminist Theory, Program and Organizational Structure''. Red Letter Press, 2001. * Rossi, Alice S. ''The Feminist Papers: from Adams to Beauvoir''. Boston: Northeastern University, 1973. * Rowbotham, Sheilah. ''A Century of Women''. Viking, London 1997 * Schneir, Miriam. ''Feminism: The Essential Historical Writings''. Vintage, 1994. * Scott, Joan Wallach ''Feminism and History (Oxford Readings in Feminism)'', Oxford University Press, 1996, * Smith, Bonnie G. ''Global Feminisms: A Survey of Issues and Controversies (Rewriting Histories)'', Routledge, 2000, * Spender, Dale (ed.). ''Feminist Theorists: Three centuries of key women thinkers'', Pantheon, 1983,


Articles

* Allen, Ann Taylor. "Feminism, Social Science, and the Meanings of Modernity: The Debate on the Origin of the Family in Europe and the United States, 1860–1914". ''The American Historical Review'', 1999 October 104(4) * Cott, Nancy F. "Feminist Politics in the 1920s: The National Woman's Party". ''Journal of American History'' 71 (June 1984): 43–68. * Cott, Nancy F. "What's In a Name? The Limits of 'Social Feminism'; or, Expanding the Vocabulary of Women's History". ''Journal of American History'' 76 (December 1989): 809–829. * * Offen, Karen. "Defining Feminism: A Comparative Historical Approach". ''Signs'' 1988 Autumn 14(1):119-57


International

* Parpart, Jane L., Conelly, M. Patricia, Barriteau, V. Eudine (eds). ''Theoretical Perspectives on Gender and Development''. Ottawa: IDRC, 2000.


Europe

* Anderson, Bonnie S. and Judith P. Zinsser. ''A History of Their Own: Women in Europe from Prehistory to the Present'', Oxford University Press, 1999 (revised edition), * Offen, Karen M. ''European Feminisms, 1700–1950: A Political History''. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 2000 * Perincioli, Cristina. ''Berlin wird feministisch. Das Beste, was von der 68er-Bewegung blieb''. Querverlag, Berlin 2015, , free access to complete English translation: http://feministberlin1968ff.de/


Great Britain

* Caine, Barbara. ''Victorian Feminists''. Oxford, 1992 * Chandrasekhar, S. ''"A Dirty, Filfthy Book": The Writing of Charles Knowlton and Annie Besant on Reproductive Physiology and British Control and an Account of the Bradlaugh-Besant Trial''. University of California Berkeley, 1981 * Craik, Elizabeth M. (ed.). "Women and Marriage in Victorian England", in ''Marriage and Property''. Aberdeen University, 1984 * Forster, Margaret. ''Significant Sisters: The grassroots of active feminism 1839-1939''. Penguin, 1986 * Fraser, Antonia. ''The Weaker Vessel''. NY: Vintage, 1985.
Hallam, David J.A., Taking on the Men: the first women parliamentary candidates 1918
, Studley, 2018 * Manvell, Roger. ''The Trial of Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh''. London: Elek, 1976 * Pankhurst, Emmeline. ''My Own Story''. London: Virago, 1979 * Pankhurst, Sylvia. ''The Suffragette Movement''. London: Virago, 1977 * Phillips, Melanie. ''The Ascent of Woman – A History of the Suffragette Movement and the ideas behind it'', London: Time Warner Book Group, 2003, * Martin Pugh (author), Pugh, Martin. ''Women and the Women's Movement in Britain, 1914 -1999'', Basingstoke [etc.]: St. Martin's Press, 2000 * Walters, Margaret. ''Feminism: A very short introduction''. Oxford, 2005 ()


Italy

* Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum, ''Liberazione della Donna. Feminism in Italy'', Wesleyan University Press, 1986


India

* Maitrayee Chaudhuri (ed.), ''Feminism in India'', London [etc.]: Zed Books, 2005


Iran

* Edward G. Browne, ''The Persian Revolution of 1905-1909''. Mage Publishers (July 1995). * Farideh Farhi, "Religious Intellectuals, the "Woman Question," and the Struggle for the Creation of a Democratic Public Sphere in Iran", ''International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society'', Vol. 15, No.2, Winter 2001. * Ziba Mir-Hosseini, "Religious Modernists and the 'Woman Question': Challenges and Complicities", ''Twenty Years of Islamic Revolution: Political and Social Transition in Iran since 1979'', Syracuse University Press, 2002, pp 74–95. * Shirin Ebadi, ''Iran Awakening: A Memoir of Revolution and Hope'', Random House (May 2, 2006),


Japan

* Vera Mackie, ''Feminism in Modern Japan: Citizenship, Embodiment and Sexuality'', Paperback edition, Cambridge University Press, 2003,


Latin America

* Nancy Sternbach, "Feminism in Latin America: from Bogotá to San Bernardo", in: ''Signs'', Winter 1992, pp. 393–434


United States

* Brownmiller, Susan. ''In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution'', Dial Books, 1999 * Cott, Nancy and Elizabeth Pleck (eds), ''A Heritage of Her Own; Toward a New Social History of American Women'', New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979 * Echols, Alice. ''Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967-1975'', University of Minnesota Press, 1990 * Flexner, Eleanor. Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement in the United States, Paperback Edition, Belknap Press 1996 * Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth., ''"Feminism Is Not the Story of My Life": How Today's Feminist Elite Has Lost Touch With the Real Concerns of Women'', Doubleday, 1996 * Keetley, Dawn (ed.) ''Public Women, Public Words: A Documentary History of American Feminism''. 3 vols.: ** Vol. 1: ''Beginnings to 1900'', Madison, Wisconsin: Madison House, 1997 ** Vol. 2: ''1900 to 1960'', Lanham, Md. [etc.]: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002 ** Vol. 3: ''1960 to the present'', Lanham, Md. [etc.]: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002 * Messer-Davidow, Ellen: ''Disciplining feminism: from social activism to academic discourse'', Duke University Press, 2002 * O'Neill, William L. ''Everyone Was Brave: A history of feminism in America''. Chicago 1971 * Roth, Benita. ''Separate Roads to Feminism: Black, Chicana, and White Feminist Movements in America's Second Wave'', Cambridge University Press, 2004 * Christine Stansell, Stansell, Christine. ''The Feminist Promise: 1792 to the Present'' (2010). , 528 pp.


Sexuality

* Foucault, Michel. ''The History of Sexuality''. Random House, New York, 1978 * Soble, Alan (ed.) ''The Philosophy of Sex: Contemporary readings''. Lanham, MD: & Littlefield, 2002.


Further reading

* Browne, Alice (1987) ''The Eighteenth-century Feminist Mind''. Brighton: Harvester * *


External links


Independent Voices: an open access collection of alternative press newspapersUN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Division for the Advancement of WomenWomen in Politics: A Very Short History
at Click! The Ongoing Feminist Revolution
The Women's Library
, online resource of the extensive collections at the London School of Economics, LSE {{Authority control History of political thought, Feminism Feminism and history, History of social movements Women's suffrage