First-wave Feminism

First-wave feminism was a period of feminist activity and thought that occured during the 19th and early 20th century throughout the Western world. It focuses on legal issues, primarily on securing women's right to vote.

The term first-wave feminism itself was coined by journalist Martha Lear in a New York Times Magazine article in March 1968 entitled "The Second Feminist Wave: What do these women want?" First-wave feminism focused on the fight for women's political power, as opposed to de facto unofficial inequalities.

The fight for women's rights began much earlier than the 20th century. In her book The Second Sex, 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. Feminists Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa and Modesta di Pozzo di Forzi worked in the 16th century. Marie le Jars de Gournay, Anne Bradstreet, and François Poullain de la Barre's Equality of Sexes came out in 1673.

The period in which Mary Wollstonecraft wrote was affected by Rousseau and the philosophy of Enlightenment. The father of the Enlightenment defined an ideal democratic society that was based on the equality of men, where women were often discriminated against. The inherent exclusion of women from discussion was addressed by both Wollstonecraft, and her contemporaries. Wollstonecraft based her work on the ideas of Rousseau. Although at first it seems to be contradictory, Wollstonecraft's idea was to expand Rosseau's democratic society but based on gender equality.

Wollstonecraft published one of the first feminist treatises, A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792), in which she advocated the social and moral equality of sexes, extending the work of her 1790 pamphlet, A Vindication of the Rights of Men. Her later unfinished novel, Maria, or the Wrongs of Women, 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 "foremother" of the British feminists movement and her ideas shaped the thinking of the suffragettes, who campaigned for the women's vote.

Early Feminism was directly correlated with the abolitionist movements and as a result many famous feminists and activists began to have their voices heard. Some of these early activists include Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Blackwell, Jane Addams, and Dorothy Day. The first-wave of feminism was primarily led by white women in the middle class, and it was not until the second wave of feminism that women of color began developing a voice. The term Feminism was created like a political illustrated ideology at that period. Feminism emerged by the speech about the reform and correction of democracy based on equalitarian conditions.

x-----x

This blog entry is made possible by Dolce & Gabbana.