The history of feminism comprises the narratives
(chronological or thematic) of the movements
and ideologies which have aimed at equal rights
for women. While feminists around the world
have differed in causes, goals, and intentions
depending on time, culture, and country, most
Western feminist historians assert that all
movements that work to obtain women's rights
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" to describe earlier movements.Modern
Western feminist history is conventionally
split into three time periods, or "waves",
each with slightly different aims based on
prior progress:
First-wave feminism of the 19th and early
20th centuries focused on overturning legal
inequalities, particularly addressing issues
of women's suffrage
Second-wave feminism (1960s–1980s) broadened
debate to include cultural inequalities, gender
norms, and the role of women in society
Third-wave feminism (1990s–2000s) refers
to diverse strains of feminist activity, seen
both as a continuation of the second wave
and as a response to its perceived failuresAlthough
the "waves" construct has been commonly used
to describe the history of feminism, the concept
has also been criticized for ignoring and
erasing the history between the "waves", by
choosing to focus solely on a few famous figures
and on popular events.
== Early feminism ==
People and activists who discuss or advance
women's equality prior to the existence of
the feminist movement 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, linear
history as implied by terms such as protofeminist
or postfeminist.Around 24 centuries ago, Plato,
according to Elaine Hoffman Baruch, "[argued]
for the total political and sexual equality
of women, advocating that they be members
of his highest class, ... those who rule and
fight".Italian-French writer Christine de
Pizan (1364 – c. 1430), the author of The
Book of the City of Ladies and Epître au
Dieu d'Amour (Epistle to the God of Love)
is cited by Simone de Beauvoir as the first
woman to denounce misogyny and write about
the relation of the sexes. Other early feminist
writers include Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa
and Modesta di Pozzo di Forzi, who worked
in the 16th century, and the 17th-century
writers Hannah Woolley in England, Juana Inés
de la Cruz in Mexico, Marie Le Jars de Gournay,
Anne Bradstreet, and François Poullain de
la Barre.One of the most important 17th-century
feminist writers in the English language was
Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
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.
== 18th century: the Age of Enlightenment
==
The Age of Enlightenment was characterized
by secular intellectual reasoning and a flowering
of philosophical writing. Many Enlightenment
philosophers defended the rights of women,
including Jeremy Bentham (1781), Marquis de
Condorcet (1790), and Mary Wollstonecraft
(1792). Other important writers of the time
that expressed feminist views included Abigail
Adams, Catharine Macaulay, and Hedvig Charlotta
Nordenflycht.
=== Jeremy Bentham ===
The English utilitarian and classical liberal
philosopher Jeremy Bentham 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. 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. Bentham
gave many examples of able female regents.
=== Marquis de Condorcet ===
Nicolas de Condorcet was a mathematician,
classical liberal politician, leading French
Revolutionary, republican, and Voltairean
anti-clericalist. He was also a fierce defender
of human rights, including the equality of
women and the abolition of slavery, unusual
for the 1780s. He advocated for women's suffrage
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 the Female Citizen 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 Citizen, 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, often characterized
as the first feminist philosopher. A Vindication
of the Rights of Woman (1792) is one of the
first works that can unambiguously be called
feminist, although by modern standards her
comparison of women to the nobility, the elite
of society (coddled, fragile, and in danger
of intellectual and moral sloth) may at first
seem dated as a feminist argument. Wollstonecraft
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. Wollstonecraft attracted
the mockery of Samuel Johnson, who described
her and her ilk as "Amazons of the pen". Based
on his relationship with Hester Thrale, he
complained of women's encroachment onto a
male territory of writing, and not their intelligence
or education. For many commentators, Wollstonecraft
represents the first codification of equality
feminism, or a refusal of the feminine 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
and Sarah Stickney Ellis's books. The Angel
in the House (1854) and El ángel del hogar,
bestsellers by Coventry Patmore and Maria
del Pilar Sinués de Marco, came to symbolize
the Victorian feminine ideal. Queen Victoria
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 addressed women's restricted
lives in the early part of the century, Charlotte
Brontë, Anne Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell,
and George Eliot 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
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, and Thomas Hardy, and the plays of
Henrik Ibsen 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".
=== 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 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, 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, 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 against
acknowledging female accomplishment in the
mid-1800s.Due to varying ideologies, feminists
were not always supportive of each other's
efforts. Harriet Martineau and others dismissed
Wollstonecraft's contributions as dangerous,
and deplored Norton's candidness, but seized
on the abolitionist 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, the Conservative leader,
as a dangerous radical on a par with Jeremy
Bentham. 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 in America,
were achieving journalistic employment, which
placed them in a position to influence other
women. Cobbe would refer to "Woman's Rights"
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 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, and provided him
with much of the subject material for The
Subjection of Women.
Emily Davies also encountered the Langham
group, and with Elizabeth Garrett 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 in 1871,
and Lady Margaret Hall 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
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, 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 Acts of
1864, 1866, and 1869, which united women's
groups and utilitarian liberals like John
Stuart Mill.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, 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 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.
Butler's activities resulted in the radicalization
of many moderate women. The Acts were repealed
in 1886.On a smaller scale, Annie Besant 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 Lear, according to Jennifer
Baumgardner. Baumgardner reports criticism
by professor Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz of the division
into waves and the difficulty of categorizing
some feminists into specific waves, 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 activism.[1]
=== First wave ===
The 19th- and early 20th-century feminist
activity in the English-speaking world that
sought to win women's suffrage, 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 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
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
and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union),
others resembling the diversity and radicalism
of much of second-wave feminism (such as Stanton,
Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage, and the National
Woman Suffrage Association, 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 (1920),
which granted white 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 was active as a poet
and religious reformer, and is recorded as
proclaiming the equality of women at her execution.
She inspired later generations of Iranian
feminists. Louise Dittmar campaigned for women's
rights, in Germany, in the 1840s. Although
slightly later in time, Fusae Ichikawa 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 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, whose Woman in the Nineteenth Century
was published in 1845. Her dispatches from
Europe for the New York Tribune helped create
to synchronize the women's rights movement.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott 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 helped to organize the
first National Women's Rights Convention in
1850, a much larger event at which Sojourner
Truth, 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 feminist
movements.
Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage 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"
and Gage wrote Woman, Church and State, neatly
inverting Johann Jakob Bachofen's thesis and
adding a unique epistemological 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, 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, suffrage advocacy
groups such as the National American Woman
Suffrage Association and the National League
of Women Voters, career associations such
as the American Association of University
Women, 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, alcohol-focused groups like
the Woman's Christian Temperance Union 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,
Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Alice Paul, Carrie Chapman
Catt, Margaret Sanger, and Charlotte Perkins
Gilman.
=== 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 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, a prelude to the 1848 revolution.
In Italy, Clara Maffei, Cristina Trivulzio
Belgiojoso, 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 was
the first sovereign state in the world to
officially grant full suffrage to women (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.Pankhursts formed the Women's
Social and Political Union (WSPU) in 1903.
As Emmline Pankhurst 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 (NUWSS) led by Millicent
Garrett Fawcett. WSPU was largely a family
affair, although externally financed. Christabel
Pankhurst became the dominant figure and gathered
friends such as Annie Kenney, 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 first labeled these
women "suffragettes" 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, a
WSPU member, unexpectedly ran onto the track
during the 1913 Epsom Derby 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 that deals with women's roles in society.
Female writers of the utopian literature movement
at the time of first-wave feminism often addressed
sexism. Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland
(1915) did so. Sultana's Dream (1905) by Bengali
Muslim feminist Roquia Sakhawat Hussain depicts
a gender-reversed purdah 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 exaggerated masculinity
alongside sexist portrayals of women. By the
1960s, science fiction combined sensationalism
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 utopias
to explore societies where gender differences
or gender power imbalances do not exist, and
dystopias 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 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 Francoise Thebaud 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.
In Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, 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, 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 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, favoring the Labour
Party, who were more sympathetic to women's
issues. The following election and gave Labour
the most seats in the house to date. The electoral
reforms also allowed women to run for Parliament.
Christabel Pankhurst narrowly failed to win
a seat in 1918, and Constance Markievicz (Sinn
Féin) was the first woman elected in Ireland
in 1918, but as an Irish nationalist, 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 was rewarded with the passage
of the Representation of the People (Equal
Franchise) Act 1928.European women received
the vote in Denmark and Iceland in 1915 (full
in 1919), the Russian Republic in 1917, Austria,
Germany and Canada in 1918, many countries
including the Netherlands in 1919, Czechoslovakia
(today Czech Republic and Slovakia) in 1920,
and Turkey and South Africa in 1930. French
women did not receive the vote until 1945.
Liechtenstein was one of the last countries,
in 1984.
==== 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 (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) 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 (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.
The council continued until the end of the
Second World War.
==== Reproductive rights ====
Laws prevented feminists from discussing and
addressing reproductive rights. Annie Besant
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 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 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 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 had been reduced from
execution to life imprisonment by the Offences
against the Person Act 1861, although some
exceptions were allowed in the Infant Life
(Preservation) Act 1929. 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,
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 and assisted
the Luftwaffe as anti-aircraft gunners, or
as guerrilla fighters in Werwolf 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 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 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.
==== Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique,
and Women's Liberation ====
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.Over the following
decade, "Women's Liberation" became a common
phrase and concept.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, 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, 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 "Women's Movement".1960s feminism,
its theory, and its activism was informed
and fueled by the social, cultural, and political
climate of that decade. This time was marked
by increased female enrollment 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.
=== Feminist writing ===
Empowered by The Feminine Mystique, new feminist
activists of the 1970s addressed more political
and sexual issues in their writing, including
Gloria Steinem's 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 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. Kathie Sarachild of Redstockings
described its function as such that women
would "find what they thought was an individual
dilemma is social predicament". Women found
that their own personal experiences were information
that they could trust in formulating political
analyses.Meanwhile, in the U.S., women's frustrations
crystallized around the failure to ratify
the Equal Rights Amendment during the 1970s.
Susan Brownmiller's 1975 Against Our Will
introduced an explicit agenda against male
violence, specifically male sexual violence,
in a treatise on rape. Her assertion that
"pornography is the theory and rape the practice"
created deep fault lines around the concepts
of objectification and commodification. Brownmiller's
other major book, In our Time (2000), is a
history of women's liberation.
=== 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. It also responds
to the backlash against the second-wave's
initiatives and movements. Third-wave feminism
seeks to challenge or avoid second-wave "essentialist"
definitions of femininity, which over-emphasized
the experiences of white, upper middle class
women. A 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.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 as
the "Lavender Menace", provoking The Woman-Identified
Woman, a 1970 manifesto that put lesbian women
at the forefront of the liberation movement.
Jill Johnston's 1973 Lesbian Nation: The Feminist
Solution argued for lesbian separatism. In
its extreme form, this was expressed as the
only appropriate choice for a woman. Eventually
the lesbian movement was welcomed into the
mainstream women's movement. This union's
threat to male normativity was substantiated
by the male backlash that followed.In reproductive
rights, feminists sought the right to contraception
and birth control, which were almost universally
restricted until the 1960s. Feminists hoped
to use the first birth control pill to free
women to decide the terms under which they
will bear children. They felt that reproductive
self-control was essential for full economic
independence from men. Access to abortion
was also widely demanded for these reasons,
but was more difficult to secure due to existing,
deep societal divisions over the issue.
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 ====
Following World War II, the United Nations
(UN) extended feminism's global reach. They
established a Commission on the Status of
Women in 1946., which later joined the 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 (1975–85),
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 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 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".
=== Fourth wave ===
Fourth-wave feminism 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 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 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 fashion
support; transgenderism support; 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"; media images, "online misogyny",
"assault[s] on public transport"; on intersectionality;
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 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 History [2] launched
Click! The Ongoing Feminist Revolution.[3]
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 ===
The wave metaphor has been critiqued as inappropriate,
limiting, and misleading by a number of feminist
scholars.While this metaphor was once useful
for United States feminists in order to gain
the attention required to make large-scale
political changes, as was the case for the
women’s suffrage movement of the 1940s,
its relevance may have not only run its course
but its usage has been argued as completely
inappropriate. For example, the suffragettes
did not use the term ‘feminism’ to describe
themselves or their movement. This critique
is shown through one early twentieth century
feminist’s words: “All feminists are suffragists,
but not all suffragists are feminists”.The
wave metaphor has been described as misleading
and even dangerous because it not only renders
the periods of time in-between waves as silent
and irrelevant, but it also contributes to
the faulty conceptualization of a particular
brand hegemonic feminism as the ultimate understanding
of what feminism is. These critiques advocate
for the recognition of periods of mass social
organizing rather than ‘waves’. It is
argued that the wave metaphor weakens the
strength and relevance of feminist arguments,
since waves necessarily must peak and then
retreat, which is not an accurate picture
of feminist progress in the United States
or elsewhere. Feminism does not retreat or
disappear in-between ‘waves'. For example,
after the explosion of mass social organizing
in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, feminism was being
worked into our institutions – a much less
glamorous but just as important job that did
not require such large-scale attention. As
a result, we have seen more and more women
in more areas of the job force, higher education,
and the installation and success of Women’s
and Gender Studies programs across the United
States, to name just a few examples of feminism’s
continuous and very relevant presence in this
time between the ‘waves’.The wave metaphor
has further been criticized for privileging
not only particular races and classes of women
in the United States, but for privileging
the feminism of the United States in general
over other locations in the world. Amrita
Basu argues for, “the politics and conditions
of emergence,” instead of the wave metaphor,
which does not allow for this privileging
of particular people and nations but instead
allows for the importance and understanding
of any and all peoples in the world who have
contributed to feminism and its many understandings
and meanings.
== National histories of feminism ==
=== France ===
The 18th century French Revolution's focus
on 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 into the
Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the
Female Citizen, 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.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 Viscount Louis de Bonald. Advancement
came mid-century under the 1848 revolution
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 (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.
The Groupe Français d'Etudes Féministes
were women intellectuals at the beginning
of the 20th century who translated part of
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 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
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 movement
lasted until 1933, when the last women's association
was dissolved by the Reza Shah's government.
The status of women further deteriorated after
the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Many of the rights
women gained under Shah were systematically
abolished through legislation, elimination
of women from work, and forced hijab (veils
for women). 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 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. 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 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.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 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 birth control availability as part of
a broad spectrum of progressive reforms. Shidzue
went on to serve in the National Diet following
the defeat of Japan in World War II and the
promulgation of the Peace Constitution by
US forces. Other figures such as 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.
=== Norway ===
Norwegian feminism's political origins are
in the women's suffrage 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 naturalist
writer, also served as the women's voice.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 (re-recreated
in modern times in 1918) and Polish territories
has traditionally been divided into seven
successive "waves".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. 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 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's 1920
passage, the prior woman movement primarily
concerned women as 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 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 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. The atmosphere
this created reignited the study of and debate
on matricentricity as a rejection of 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.
== See also ==
Coverture
History of brassieres
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
Women's suffrage organizations
Women's rights in 2014
1975 Icelandic women's strike
== References ==
== Bibliography ==
== Further reading ==
Browne, Alice (1987) The Eighteenth-century
Feminist Mind. Brighton: Harvester
Swanwick, H. M. (1913). The Future of the
Women's Movement. London: G. Bell & Sons Ltd.
== External links ==
Independent Voices: an open access collection
of alternative press newspapers
Timeline of feminist history in the USA
UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs,
Division for the Advancement of Women
Women in Politics: A Very Short History at
Click! The Ongoing Feminist Revolution
The Women's Library, online resource of the
extensive collections at the LSE
