III.

The First Wave

Although the word feminism was not used until the end of the 19th century, recognizably feminist beliefs began to emerge in the late 18th century. The earliest form of feminism was concerned with equal rights for women and men: this meant equal standing as citizens in public life and, to some extent, equal legal status within the home. These ideas emerged in response to the American Revolution (1775-1783) and the French Revolution (1789-1799), both of which advocated values of liberty and equality. Feminists in France argued that the revolution’s values of liberty, equality, and fraternity should apply to all, while women activists in America called for an extension of the principles of the American Declaration of Independence to women, including rights to citizenship and property.

In England, Mary Wollstonecraft wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). In this work she demanded equality and better education for women and made the first sustained critique of the social system that relegated women to an inferior position. In the early 19th century, a small group of middle-class women in Britain began to call for better education, improved legal rights (especially within marriage), employment opportunities, and the right to vote. Equal-rights feminism was given theoretical justification by philosopher John Stuart Mill, who wrote The Subjection of Women (1869), which was partly influenced by his wife, Harriet Taylor.

From the 1850s onward, the campaign for equal rights for women became focused on winning the right to vote, also known as woman suffrage. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton led the campaign for women’s suffrage in the United States. Suffrage movements also appeared in New Zealand, the Soviet Union, Germany, Poland, Austria, and Sweden.

Toward the end of the 19th century, another strand of feminist thinking appeared that questioned social attitudes toward women. These attitudes were expressed through representations of women in literature and other art forms and social rules for women’s behavior. By the turn of the 20th century, the media in North America and Europe became preoccupied with the image of the “new woman.” This woman challenged patriarchy not only by demanding equal civil rights but also by defying social conventions and choosing her own lifestyle and clothes.

By the 1920s, feminists began to turn their attention from questions of equality between women and men to issues that mainly concerned women. They called, for example, for improved welfare provisions for mothers and children (see Child Welfare). These issues would become stronger in the second wave of feminism.