This article will be permanently flagged as inappropriate and made unaccessible to everyone. Are you certain this article is inappropriate? Excessive Violence Sexual Content Political / Social
Email Address:
Article Id: WHEBN0001271947 Reproduction Date:
First-wave feminism refers to a period of feminist activity during the 19th and early 20th century throughout the world, particularly in the United Kingdom, Canada, the Netherlands and the United States. It focused on legal issues, primarily on gaining women's suffrage (the right to vote).
The term first-wave was coined in March 1968 by Marsha Lear writing in The New York Times Magazine, who at the same time also used the term "second-wave feminism".[1][2] At that time, the women's movement was focused on de facto (unofficial) inequalities, which it wished to distinguish from the objectives of the earlier feminists.
According to Miriam Schneir, Simone de Beauvoir wrote that the first woman to "take up her pen in defense of her sex" was Christine de Pizan in the 15th century.[3] Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa and Modesta di Pozzo di Forzi worked in the 16th century.[3] Marie Le Jars de Gournay, Anne Bradstreet and François Poullain de la Barre wrote in the 17th.[3]
Mary Wollstonecraft published one of the first feminist treatises, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in which she advocated the social and moral equality of the sexes, extending the work of her 1790 pamphlet, A Vindication of the Rights of Men. Her later unfinished novel, Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman, earned her considerable criticism as she discussed women's sexual desires. She died young, and her widower, the philosopher William Godwin, quickly wrote a memoir of her that, contrary to his intentions, destroyed her reputation for generations.
Wollstonecraft is regarded as the grandmother of British feminism and her ideas shaped the thinking of the suffragettes, who campaigned for the women's vote. After generations of work, this was eventually achieved.
The first wave of Australian feminism, which dates back to the late 19th century, was chiefly concerned with suffrage (women's right to vote) and consequently with women's access to parliaments and other political activities.[4]
In 1882, Rose Scott, a women's rights activist, began to hold a weekly salon meetings in her Sydney home, left to her by her late mother. Through these meetings, she became well known amongst politicians, judges, philanthropists, writers and poets. In 1889, she helped to found the Women's Literary Society, which later grew into the Womanhood Suffrage League in 1891. Leading politicians hosted by Scott included Bernhard Ringrose Wise, William Holman, William Morris Hughes and Thomas Bavin, who met and discussed the drafting of the bill that eventually became the Early Closing Act of 1899.[5]
The first women's movement was led by the Dansk Kvindesamfund ("Danish Women's Society"). Line Luplau was one of the most notable woman in this era. Tagea Brandt was also part of this movement, and in her honor was stablished Tagea Brandt Rejselegat or Travel Scholarship for women. The Dansk Kvindesamfund's efforts as a leading group of women for women led to the existence of the revised Danish constitution of 1915, giving women the right to vote and the provision of equal opportunity laws during the 1920s, which influenced the present-day legislative measures to grant women access to education, work, marital rights and other obligations.[6]
Early New Zealand feminists and suffragettes included Maud Pember Reeves (Australian-born; later lived in London), Kate Sheppard and Mary Ann Müller. In 1893, Elizabeth Yates became Mayor of Onehunga, the first time such a post had been held by a female anywhere in the British Empire. Early university graduates were Emily Siedeberg (doctor, graduated 1895) and Ethel Benjamin (lawyer, graduated 1897). The Female Law Practitioners Act was passed in 1896 and Benjamin was admitted as a barrister and solicitor of the Supreme Court of New Zealand in 1897. See Women's suffrage in New Zealand.
Although in the Netherlands during the Conference of Badasht (1848) presented progress on the concerns of first wave feminism. There is a synchronicity in time and a likeness in theme and events between Persia (later named Iran) and the United States between the conference at Badasht and the Seneca Falls Convention.[7][8] First the conference happened over three weeks from late June to mid-July 1848 and the Seneca Falls Convention happened in mid-July 1848. Both conferences had women (Tahirih and Elizabeth Cady Stanton) take strong stances on the role of women in the public arena that some attending reacted to harshly. And lastly leading men present (Quddús and Frederick Douglass) supported these calls during the meetings healing the breach. Some even see a parallel in the background discussions that are partially documented to arrange how things would be brought up and settled.
The conference of Badasht is considered by Bahá'ís as a signal moment that demonstrated that Islamic Sharia law had been abrogated[9][10] as well as a key demonstration of the thrust of raising the social position of women.[11] Although the unveiling led to accusations of immorality[12][13] the Báb responded by supporting her position and naming her the Pure (Táhirih).[14] Modern women scholars review this kind of accusation as part of a pattern faced by women leaders and writers then and since[15] in a way that Azar Nafisi says "…the Islamic regime today… fears them and feels vulnerable in the face of a resistance that is not just political but existential."[16] See the Bahá'í Faith and gender equality.
Feminist issues and gender roles were discussed in media and literature during the 18th-century by people such as Josefina Deland in the 1850s.[18]
In 1856, Fredrika Bremer published her famous Hertha (novel), which aroused great controversy and created a debate referred to as the Hertha Debate. The two foremost questions was to abolish coverture for unmarried women, and for the state to provide women an equivalent to a university. Both questions were met: in 1858, a reform granted unmarried women the right to apply for legal majority by a simple procedure, and in 1861, Högre lärarinneseminariet was founded as a "Women's University". In 1859, the first women's magazine in Sweden and the Nordic countries, the Tidskrift för hemmet, was founded by Sophie Adlersparre and Rosalie Olivecrona. This has been referred to as the starting point of a women's movement in Sweden.
The organized women's movement begun in 1873, when Country Association for Women's Suffrage was founded.
In 1921, women suffrage was finally introduced. The women suffrage reform was followed by the Behörighetslagen of 1923 (Act of Access of 1923), in which males and females were formally given equal access to all professions and positions in society, the only exceptions being military and priesthood positions.[19] The last two restrictions were removed in 1958, when women were allowed to become priests, and in a series of reforms between 1980 and 1989, when all military professions were opened to women.[20]
The first organized movement for English feminism was the
Different accounts of the involvement of African-American women in the Women's Suffrage Movement are given. In a 1974 interview, Alice Paul notes that a compromise was made between southern groups to have white women march first, then men, then African-American women.[35] In another account by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), difficulties in segregating women resulted in African-American women marching with their respective States without hindrance.[36] Among them was Ida B. Wells-Barnett, who marched with the Illinois delegation.
In 1860, New York passed a revised Married Women's Property Act which gave women shared ownership of their children, allowing them to have a say in their children's wills, wages, and granting them the right to inherit property.[34] Further advances and setbacks were experienced in New York and other states, but with each new win the feminists were able to use it as an example to apply more leverage on unyielding legislative bodies. The end of the first wave is often linked with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (1920), granting women the right to vote. This was the major victory of the movement, which also included reforms in higher education, in the workplace and professions, and in health care.
The first wave of feminists, in contrast to the second wave, focused very little on the subjects of abortion, birth control, and overall reproductive rights of women. Though she never married, Anthony published her views about marriage, holding that a woman should be allowed to refuse sex with her husband; the American woman had no legal recourse at that time against rape by her husband.
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 such as Matilda Joslyn Gage of the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) resembling the radicalism of much of second-wave feminism. The majority of first-wave feminists were more moderate and conservative than radical or revolutionary—like the members of the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) they were willing to work within the political system and they understood the clout of joining with sympathetic men in power to promote the cause of suffrage. The limited membership of the NWSA was narrowly focused on gaining a federal amendment for women's suffrage, whereas the AWSA, with ten times as many members, worked to gain suffrage on a state-by-state level as a necessary precursor to federal suffrage. The NWSA had broad goals, hoping to achieve a more equal social role for women, but the AWSA was aware of the divisive nature of many of those goals and instead chose to focus solely on suffrage. The NWSA was known for having more publicly aggressive tactics (such as picketing and hunger strikes) whereas the AWSA used more traditional strategies like lobbying, delivering speeches, applying political pressure and gathering signatures for petitions.[33]
Woman in the Nineteenth Century by Margaret Fuller has been considered the first major feminist work in the United States and is often compared to Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.[31] Prominent leaders of the feminist movement in the United States include Lucretia Coffin Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, and Susan B. Anthony; Anthony and other activists such as Victoria Woodhull and Matilda Joslyn Gage made attempts to cast votes prior to their legal entitlement to do so, for which many of them faced charges. Other important leaders included several women who dissented against the law in order to have their voices heard,(Sarah and Angelina Grimké), in addition to other activists such as Carrie Chapman Catt, Alice Paul, Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells, Margaret Sanger and Lucy Burns.[32]
Many feminist writers and women's rights activists argued that it was not equality to men which they needed but a recognition of what women need to fulfill their potential of their own natures, not only within the aspect of work but society and home life too. Virginia Woolf produced her essay A Room of One's Own based on the ideas of women as writers and characters in fiction. Woolf said that a woman must have money and a room of her own to be able to write. New Zealand was the first country to grant women the right to vote at a national level, while Finland, as well as some American states gave women voting rights at a state level before Australian women obtained that right across the nation.[4]
The rise in unemployment during the Great Depression which started in the 1920s hit women first, and when the men also lost their jobs there was further strain on families. Many women served in the armed forces during World War II, when around 300,000 American women served in the navy and army, performing jobs such as secretaries, typists and nurses.
The Representation of the People Act 1918 extended the franchise to women who were at least 30 years old and they or their husbands were property holders, while the Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act 1918 gave women the right to sit in Parliament, although it was only slowly that women were actually elected. In 1928, the franchise was extended to all women over 21 by the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928, on an equal basis to men.[29] Women started serving on school boards and local bodies, and numbers kept increasing. This period also saw more women gaining access to higher education. In 1910, "women were attending many leading medical schools, and in 1915 the American Medical Association began to admit women members."[30] A Matrimonial Causes Act 1923 gave women the right to the same grounds for divorce as men.
In 1918 Marie Stopes published the very influential Married Love,[28] in which she advocated gender equality in marriage and the importance of women's sexual desire. (Importation of the book into the United States was banned as obscene until 1931.)
opened professions and the civil service to women, and marriage was no longer a legal barrier to women working outside the home. Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919, more women found work outside the home. As a result of the wartime experience of women in the workforce, the World War I in 1896. In the beginning of the 20th century, women's employment was still predominantly limited to factory labor and domestic work. During Condition of Working Women and the Factory Acts They also together edited the [27] and Boucherett established the Women's Employment Defence League in 1891, to defend women's working rights against restrictive employment legislation.Helen Blackburn [26]
Second-wave feminism, Women's suffrage, Feminist theory, Women's rights, Third-wave feminism
Feminism, Supreme Court of the United States, New York City, Feminist theory, Third-wave feminism
Gender studies, Feminism, Psychoanalysis, Women's studies, Patriarchy
Gender identity, Feminism, Transgender, Sociology, Feminist theory
Female genital mutilation, China, Feminism, Cambodia, Woman
Feminism, Women's suffrage, Second-wave feminism, Feminist theory, Feminist movement
Feminism, Feminist theory, Gender studies, Women's suffrage in the United Kingdom, Women's suffrage in the United States
Feminism, Second-wave feminism, Jewish feminism, Feminist theory, Women's suffrage
Feminism, Second-wave feminism, Feminist theory, Gender studies, Women's suffrage