First-wave feminism
Encyclopedia
First-wave feminism refers to a period of feminist activity during the 19th and early twentieth century in the United Kingdom
, Canada
, and the United States
. It focused on de jure
(officially mandated) inequalities, primarily on gaining women's suffrage
(the right to vote).
The term first-wave was coined retroactively
in the 1970s. The women's movement then, focusing as much on fighting de facto
(unofficial) inequalities as de jure ones, acknowledged its predecessors by calling itself second-wave feminism
.
wrote that the first woman to "take up her pen in defense of her sex" was Christine de Pizan
in the 15th century. 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
wrote in the 17th.
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 suffragette
s, who campaigned for the women's vote. After generations of work, this was eventually granted − to some women in 1918, and equally with men in 1928.
In 1918 Marie Stopes
, who believed in equality in marriage and the importance of women's sexual desire, published Married Love
, a sex manual that, according to a survey of American academics in 1935, was one of the 25 most influential books of the previous 50 years, ahead of Relativity
by Albert Einstein
and Interpretation of Dreams
by Sigmund Freud
.
saw more women go to work outside the home. In the beginning of the 20th century, women were limited to factory labor and domestic work. Women gained the right to sit in parliament, although it was only slowly that women were actually elected. Women started serving on school boards and local bodies, and numbers kept increasing after the war. This period also saw more women starting to become more educated. In 1910, "women were attending many leading medical schools, and in 1915 the American Medical Association began to admit women members." Bills such as the Women's Emancipation Bill passed which aided the women's movement. Representation of the People Act 1918
had given women the right to vote if they were property holders and older than 29. In 1928, this was extended to all women over 21. The Sex Disqualification (removal) Act 1919 opened professions and the Civil Service to women, and marriage was no longer seen to legally stop women from working outside the home. A Matrimonial Causes Act in 1923 gave women the right to the same grounds for divorce as men. However, the recession which started in the 1920s meant unemployment rose, which women were the first to face. Many women served in the armed forces during the war. In World War II, around 300,000 American women served in the Navy and Army performing jobs such as secretaries, typists and nurses. 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 fulfil 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.
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. 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
.
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.
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
.
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. 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.
Many white women excluded black women from their organizations and denied them the right to participate in events because they feared that the racist attitudes of Southern voters would affect their support of the women's movement. One notable instance of black exclusion was at a Washington parade in 1913, when activist Alice Paul did not allow the black feminist Ida Wells-Barnett to march with the other white women; instead, Paul told her that she could march at the back of the procession with the other black women.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, and the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. It focused on de jure
De jure
De jure is an expression that means "concerning law", as contrasted with de facto, which means "concerning fact".De jure = 'Legally', De facto = 'In fact'....
(officially mandated) inequalities, primarily on gaining women's suffrage
Women's suffrage
Women's suffrage or woman suffrage is the right of women to vote and to run for office. The expression is also used for the economic and political reform movement aimed at extending these rights to women and without any restrictions or qualifications such as property ownership, payment of tax, or...
(the right to vote).
The term first-wave was coined retroactively
Retronym
A retronym is a type of neologism that provides a new name for an object or concept to differentiate the original form or version of it from a more recent form or version. The original name is most often augmented with an adjective to account for later developments of the object or concept itself...
in the 1970s. The women's movement then, focusing as much on fighting de facto
De facto
De facto is a Latin expression that means "concerning fact." In law, it often means "in practice but not necessarily ordained by law" or "in practice or actuality, but not officially established." It is commonly used in contrast to de jure when referring to matters of law, governance, or...
(unofficial) inequalities as de jure ones, acknowledged its predecessors by calling itself second-wave feminism
Second-wave feminism
The Feminist Movement, or the Women's Liberation Movement in the United States refers to a period of feminist activity which began during the early 1960s and lasted through the early 1990s....
.
Origins
According to Miriam Schneir, Simone de BeauvoirSimone de Beauvoir
Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir, often shortened to Simone de Beauvoir , was a French existentialist philosopher, public intellectual, and social theorist. She wrote novels, essays, biographies, an autobiography in several volumes, and monographs on philosophy, politics, and...
wrote that the first woman to "take up her pen in defense of her sex" was Christine de Pizan
Christine de Pizan
Christine de Pizan was a Venetian-born late medieval author who challenged misogyny and stereotypes prevalent in the male-dominated medieval culture. As a poet, she was well known and highly regarded in her own day; she completed 41 works during her 30 year career , and can be regarded as...
in the 15th century. Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa
Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa
Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim was a German magician, occult writer, theologian, astrologer, and alchemist.-Life:Agrippa was born in Cologne in 1486...
and Modesta di Pozzo di Forzi
Modesta di Pozzo di Forzi
Modesta di Pozzo di Forzi was an author living in Venice, Italy. She published "in no uncertain words" a book about the superiority of women to men in 1593. She died shortly after the publication and so did not hear about the great success of her book.-Notes:...
worked in the 16th century. Marie Le Jars de Gournay
Marie de Gournay
Marie de Gournay was a French writer, who wrote a novel and a number of other literary compositions, including two proto-feminist works, The Equality of Men and Women and The Ladies' Grievance . In her novel Le Promenoir de M...
, Anne Bradstreet
Anne Bradstreet
Anne Dudley Bradstreet was New England's first published poet. Her work met with a positive reception in both the Old World and the New World.-Biography:...
and François Poullain de la Barre
François Poullain de la Barre
François Poulain de la Barre , was a writer, Cartesian and feminist philosopher.-Life:...
wrote in the 17th.
United Kingdom
Mary WollstonecraftMary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft was an eighteenth-century British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book...
published one of the first feminist treatises, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects , written by the 18th-century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, is one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy. In it, Wollstonecraft responds to those educational and political theorists of the 18th...
(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
A Vindication of the Rights of Men
A Vindication of the Rights of Men, in a Letter to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke; Occasioned by His Reflections on the Revolution in France is a political pamphlet, written by the 18th-century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, which attacks aristocracy and advocates republicanism...
. Her later unfinished novel, Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman
Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman
Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman is the 18th century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft's unfinished novelistic sequel to her revolutionary political treatise A Vindication of the Rights of Woman...
, earned her considerable criticism as she discussed women's sexual desires. She died young, and her widower, the philosopher William Godwin
William Godwin
William Godwin was an English journalist, political philosopher and novelist. He is considered one of the first exponents of utilitarianism, and the first modern proponent of anarchism...
, 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
Feminist history in the United Kingdom
Feminism in the United Kingdom covers the Feminism movement in the United Kingdom through history to the present day.-19th century:...
and her ideas shaped the thinking of the suffragette
Suffragette
"Suffragette" is a term coined by the Daily Mail newspaper as a derogatory label for members of the late 19th and early 20th century movement for women's suffrage in the United Kingdom, in particular members of the Women's Social and Political Union...
s, who campaigned for the women's vote. After generations of work, this was eventually granted − to some women in 1918, and equally with men in 1928.
In 1918 Marie Stopes
Marie Stopes
Marie Carmichael Stopes was a British author, palaeobotanist, campaigner for women's rights and pioneer in the field of birth control...
, who believed in equality in marriage and the importance of women's sexual desire, published Married Love
Married Love
Married Love or Love in Marriage is a book written by Dr. Marie Carmichael Stopes, first published in March 1918 by a small publisher, after many other larger publishers turned her down because of the content. It rapidly sold out, and was in its sixth printing within a fortnight.The US Customs...
, a sex manual that, according to a survey of American academics in 1935, was one of the 25 most influential books of the previous 50 years, ahead of Relativity
Special relativity
Special relativity is the physical theory of measurement in an inertial frame of reference proposed in 1905 by Albert Einstein in the paper "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies".It generalizes Galileo's...
by Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...
and Interpretation of Dreams
Interpretation of dreams
Interpretation of dreams may refer to:* Dream interpretation is the process of assigning meaning to dreams* Oneiromancy, a form of divination based upon dreams* The Interpretation of Dreams, Sigmund Freud's 1899 book about psychoanalysis and dreams...
by Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
.
Early 20th century
During the early 20th century, English women achieved civil equality, in theory. World War IWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
saw more women go to work outside the home. In the beginning of the 20th century, women were limited to factory labor and domestic work. Women gained the right to sit in parliament, although it was only slowly that women were actually elected. Women started serving on school boards and local bodies, and numbers kept increasing after the war. This period also saw more women starting to become more educated. In 1910, "women were attending many leading medical schools, and in 1915 the American Medical Association began to admit women members." Bills such as the Women's Emancipation Bill passed which aided the women's movement. Representation of the People Act 1918
Representation of the People Act 1918
The Representation of the People Act 1918 was an Act of Parliament passed to reform the electoral system in the United Kingdom. It is sometimes known as the Fourth Reform Act...
had given women the right to vote if they were property holders and older than 29. In 1928, this was extended to all women over 21. The Sex Disqualification (removal) Act 1919 opened professions and the Civil Service to women, and marriage was no longer seen to legally stop women from working outside the home. A Matrimonial Causes Act in 1923 gave women the right to the same grounds for divorce as men. However, the recession which started in the 1920s meant unemployment rose, which women were the first to face. Many women served in the armed forces during the war. In World War II, around 300,000 American women served in the Navy and Army performing jobs such as secretaries, typists and nurses. 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 fulfil their potential of their own natures, not only within the aspect of work but society and home life too. Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
produced her essay A Room of One's Own
A Room of One's Own
A Room of One's Own is an extended essay by Virginia Woolf. First published on 24 October 1929, the essay was based on a series of lectures she delivered at Newnham College and Girton College, two women's colleges at Cambridge University in October 1928...
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.
United States
The Great Lawsuit
Woman in the Nineteenth Century is a book by American journalist, editor, and women's rights advocate Margaret Fuller. Originally published in July 1843 in The Dial magazine as "The Great Lawsuit. Man versus Men...
by Margaret Fuller
Margaret Fuller
Sarah Margaret Fuller Ossoli, commonly known as Margaret Fuller, was an American journalist, critic, and women's rights advocate associated with the American transcendentalism movement. She was the first full-time American female book reviewer in journalism...
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. Prominent leaders of the feminist movement in the United States include Lucretia Coffin Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Elizabeth Cady Stanton was an American social activist, abolitionist, and leading figure of the early woman's movement...
, Lucy Stone
Lucy Stone
Lucy Stone was a prominent American abolitionist and suffragist, and a vocal advocate and organizer promoting rights for women. In 1847, Stone was the first woman from Massachusetts to earn a college degree. She spoke out for women's rights and against slavery at a time when women were discouraged...
, and Susan B. Anthony
Susan B. Anthony
Susan Brownell Anthony was a prominent American civil rights leader who played a pivotal role in the 19th century women's rights movement to introduce women's suffrage into the United States. She was co-founder of the first Women's Temperance Movement with Elizabeth Cady Stanton as President...
; Anthony and other activists such as Victoria Woodhull
Victoria Woodhull
Victoria Claflin Woodhull was an American leader of the woman's suffrage movement, an advocate of free love; together with her sister, the first women to operate a brokerage in Wall Street; the first women to start a weekly newspaper; an activist for women's rights and labor reforms and, in 1872,...
and Matilda Joslyn Gage
Matilda Joslyn Gage
Matilda Electa Joslyn Gage was a suffragist, a Native American activist, an abolitionist, a freethinker, and a prolific author, who was "born with a hatred of oppression".-Early activities:...
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
Grimké sisters
Sarah Grimké and Angelina Grimké , known as the Grimké sisters, were 19th-century American Quakers, educators and writers who were early advocates of abolitionism and women's rights....
), in addition to other activists such as Carrie Chapman Catt
Carrie Chapman Catt
Carrie Chapman Catt was a women's suffrage leader who campaigned for the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution which gave U.S. women the right to vote in 1920...
, Alice Paul
Alice Paul
Alice Stokes Paul was an American suffragist and activist. Along with Lucy Burns and others, she led a successful campaign for women's suffrage that resulted in the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920.-Activism: Alice Paul received her undergraduate education from...
, Sojourner Truth
Sojourner Truth
Sojourner Truth was the self-given name, from 1843 onward, of Isabella Baumfree, an African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist. Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, New York, but escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826. After going to court to recover her son, she...
, Ida B. Wells
Ida B. Wells
Ida Bell Wells-Barnett was an African American journalist, newspaper editor and, with her husband, newspaper owner Ferdinand L. Barnett, an early leader in the civil rights movement. She documented lynching in the United States, showing how it was often a way to control or punish blacks who...
, Margaret Sanger
Margaret Sanger
Margaret Higgins Sanger was an American sex educator, nurse, and birth control activist. Sanger coined the term birth control, opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, and established Planned Parenthood...
and Lucy Burns
Lucy Burns
Lucy Burns was an American suffragist and women's rights advocate. She was a passionate activist in the United States and in the United Kingdom. Burns was a close friend of Alice Paul, and together they ultimately formed the National Woman's Party.-Early life and education:Lucy Burns was born in...
.
First-wave feminism involved a wide range of women, some belonging to conservative Christian groups (such as Frances Willard
Frances Willard (suffragist)
Frances Elizabeth Caroline Willard was an American educator, temperance reformer, and women's suffragist. Her influence was instrumental in the passage of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution...
and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union
Woman's Christian Temperance Union
The Woman's Christian Temperance Union was the first mass organization among women devoted to social reform with a program that "linked the religious and the secular through concerted and far-reaching reform strategies based on applied Christianity." Originally organized on December 23, 1873, in...
), others such as Matilda Joslyn Gage
Matilda Joslyn Gage
Matilda Electa Joslyn Gage was a suffragist, a Native American activist, an abolitionist, a freethinker, and a prolific author, who was "born with a hatred of oppression".-Early activities:...
of the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) resembling the radicalism of much of second-wave feminism
Second-wave feminism
The Feminist Movement, or the Women's Liberation Movement in the United States refers to a period of feminist activity which began during the early 1960s and lasted through the early 1990s....
. 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.
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
Spousal rape
Marital rape, also known as spousal rape, is non-consensual sex in which the perpetrator is the victim's spouse. As such, it as a form of partner rape, of domestic violence, and of sexual abuse. Once widely condoned or ignored by law, spousal rape is now repudiated by international conventions and...
.
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. 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
Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits any United States citizen to be denied the right to vote based on sex. It was ratified on August 18, 1920....
(1920), granting women the right to vote. This was the major victory of the movement, which also included reforms in higher education
Higher education
Higher, post-secondary, tertiary, or third level education refers to the stage of learning that occurs at universities, academies, colleges, seminaries, and institutes of technology...
, in the workplace and professions, and in health care.
Many white women excluded black women from their organizations and denied them the right to participate in events because they feared that the racist attitudes of Southern voters would affect their support of the women's movement. One notable instance of black exclusion was at a Washington parade in 1913, when activist Alice Paul did not allow the black feminist Ida Wells-Barnett to march with the other white women; instead, Paul told her that she could march at the back of the procession with the other black women.
See also
- Second-wave feminismSecond-wave feminismThe Feminist Movement, or the Women's Liberation Movement in the United States refers to a period of feminist activity which began during the early 1960s and lasted through the early 1990s....
- Third-wave feminismThird-wave feminismThird-wave feminism is a term identified with several diverse strains of feminist activity and study whose exact boundaries in the historiography of feminism are a subject of debate, but often marked as beginning in the 1980s and continuing to the present...
- The Subjection of WomenThe Subjection of WomenThe Subjection of Women is the title of an essay written by John Stuart Mill in 1869, possibly jointly with his wife Harriet Taylor Mill, stating an argument in favour of equality between the sexes...
by John Stuart Mill - Timeline of women's rights (other than voting)