First-wave feminism


First-wave feminism was a period of feminist activity and thought that occurred during the 19th and early 20th century throughout the Western world. It focused 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 inequalities.

Origins

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.

Wollstonecraft

The period in which Mary Wollstonecraft wrote was affected by Rousseau and the philosophy of the 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 Rousseau's democratic society but based on gender equality.
Wollstonecraft published one of the first feminist treatises, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 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, , 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 "fore-mother" of the British feminist movement and her ideas shaped the thinking of the suffragettes, who campaigned for the women's vote.

Early American efforts

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.
: "Day of the uprising of female workers against kitchen slavery".
along with other Parisian suffragettes in 1935. The newspaper headline reads, in translation, "THE FRENCHWOMAN MUST VOTE".

Education

Education amongst young Swiss women was very important during the suffrage movements. Educating young women in society on the importance of self-identity, and going to school was very important to the public and for women to realize what their full potentials were. The Swiss suffrage movements believed it was important for young women to know that there was more to their life than just bearing children, which was a very universal thought and action during the suffrage movements in the 1960s and 70s. In a 2015 evaluation from Lord David Willetts he had discovered and stated that in 2013, the percentage of undergraduate students in the UK were 54 percent females and 46 percent were male undergrads. Whereas in the 1960s only 25 percent of full-time students in the United Kingdom were females. The increase of females going to school and contributing in the educational system can be linked to the women’s suffrage movements that aimed to encourage women to enroll in school for higher education. This right and political affair eventually came after the right for women to vote in political elections which was granted in 1971. In the 1960s in the United Kingdom, women were usually the minority and a rarity when it came to the higher education system. When “The Feminist Mystique,” was published in the United States by Betty Friedan in 1963, the feminist movements set a new standard and gender roles for women as well.

By country

Australia

In 1882, Rose Scott, a women's rights activist, began to hold 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 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.

Denmark

The first women's movement was led by the Dansk Kvindesamfund, founded in 1871. 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 established the 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.

New Zealand

Early New Zealand feminists and suffragettes included Maud Pember Reeves, 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 and Ethel Benjamin. 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.
, New Zealand. The figures shown from left to right are Amey Daldy, Kate Sheppard, Ada Wells and Harriet Morison

The Netherlands

Although in the Netherlands during the Age of Enlightenment the idea of the equality of women and men made progress, no practical institutional measures or legislation resulted. In the second half of the nineteenth century many initiatives by feminists sprung up in The Netherlands. Aletta Jacobs requested and obtained as the first woman in the Netherlands the right to study at university in 1871, becoming the first female medical doctor and academic. She became a lifelong campaigner for women's suffrage, equal rights, birth control, and international peace, travelling worldwide for, e.g., the International Alliance of Women. Wilhelmina Drucker was a politician, a prolific writer and a peace activist, who fought for the vote and equal rights through political and feminist organisations she founded. In 1917–1919 her goal of women's suffrage was reached. Cornelia Ramondt-Hirschmann, President of the Dutch Women's International League for Peace and Freedom Selma Meyer, Secretary of the Dutch Women's International League for Peace and Freedom

Sweden

Feminist issues and gender roles were discussed in media and literature during the 18th century by people such as Margareta Momma, Catharina Ahlgren, Anna Maria Rückerschöld and Hedvig Charlotta Nordenflycht, but it created no movement of any kind. The first person to hold public speeches and agitate in favor of feminism was Sophie Sager in 1848, and the first organization created to deal with a women's issue was Svenska lärarinnors pensionsförening by Josefina Deland in 1855.
In 1856, Fredrika Bremer published her famous Hertha, 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 Married Woman's Property Rights Association was co-founded by Anna Hierta-Retzius and Ellen Anckarsvärd. The prime task of the organization was to abolish coverture. In 1884, Fredrika Bremer Association was founded by Sophie Adlersparre to work for the improvement in women's rights. The second half of the 19th century saw the creation of several women's rights organisations and a considerable activity within both active organization as well as intellectual debate. The 1880s saw the so-called Sedlighetsdebatten, were gender roles were discussed in literary debate in regards to sexual double standards in opposed to sexual equality. In 1902, finally, the National Association for Women's Suffrage was founded.
In 1921, women's suffrage was finally introduced. The women suffrage reform was followed by the Behörighetslagen 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. 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.

Switzerland

The Swiss suffrage movement had struggled for equality in their society for decades until the early 1970s; this wave of feminism also included enfranchisement. October 31, 1971 Swiss women were granted the right to vote in political elections. According to Lee Ann Banaszak the main reasons for lack of success in women’s suffrage for Swiss women was due to the differences in mobilization of members into suffrage organizations, financial resources of the suffrage movements, alliances formed with other political actors, and the characteristics of the political systems. Therefore the success of the Swiss women’s suffrage movement was heavily affected by the resources and political structures. “The Swiss movement had to operate in a system where decisions were made carefully by a constructed consensus and where opposition parties never launched an electoral challenge that might of prodded governing parties into action.” This explains how the closed legislative process made it way more difficult for suffrage activists to participate in, or even track women’s voting rights. Swiss suffrage also lacked strong allies when it came from their struggle to vote in political elections. The 1970s saw a turning point for Swiss feminist movements, and they began to steadily make more progress in their struggle for equality to present day.

United Kingdom

The early feminist reformers were unorganized, and including prominent individuals who had suffered as victims of injustice. This included individuals such as Caroline Norton whose personal tragedy where she was unable to obtain a divorce and was denied access to her three sons by her husband, led her to a life of intense campaigning which successfully led to the passing of the Custody of Infants Act 1839 and the introduction of the Tender years doctrine for child custody arrangement. The Act gave married women, for the first time, a right to their children. However, because women needed to petition in the Court of Chancery, in practice few women had the financial means to petition for their rights.
The first organized movement for English feminism was the Langham Place Circle of the 1850s, which included among others Barbara Bodichon and Bessie Rayner Parkes. The group campaigned for many women's causes, including improved female rights in employment, and education. It also pursued women's property rights through its Married Women's Property Committee. In 1854, Bodichon published her Brief Summary of the Laws of England concerning Women, which was used by the Social Science Association after it was formed in 1857 to push for the passage of the Married Women's Property Act 1882. In 1858, Barbara Bodichon, Matilda Mary Hays and Bessie Rayner Parkes established the first feminist British periodical, the English Woman's Journal, with Bessie Parkes the chief editor. The journal continued publication until 1864 and was succeeded in 1866 by the Englishwoman's Review edited until 1880 by Jessie Boucherett which continued publication until 1910. Jessie Boucherett and Adelaide Anne Proctor joined the Langham Place Circle in 1859. The group was active until 1866. Also in 1859, Jessie Boucherett, Barbara Bodichon and Adelaide Proctor formed the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women to promote the training and employment of women. The society is one of the earliest British women's organisations, and continues to operate as the registered charity Futures for Women. Helen Blackburn and Boucherett established the Women's Employment Defence League in 1891, to defend women's working rights against restrictive employment legislation. They also together edited the Condition of Working Women and the Factory Acts in 1896. In the beginning of the 20th century, women's employment was still predominantly limited to factory labor and domestic work. During World War I, more women found work outside the home. As a result of the wartime experience of women in the workforce, the Sex Disqualification Act 1919 opened professions and the civil service to women, and marriage was no longer a legal barrier to women working outside the home.
In 1918 Marie Stopes published the very influential Married Love, in which she advocated gender equality in marriage and the importance of women's sexual desire.
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 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 Act 1928, on an equal basis to men.
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.

United States

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,, 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, others such as Matilda Joslyn Gage of the National Woman Suffrage Association 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 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 whereas the AWSA used more traditional strategies like lobbying, delivering speeches, applying political pressure and gathering signatures for petitions.
During the first wave, there was a notable connection between the slavery abolition movement and the women's rights movement. Frederick Douglass was heavily involved in both movements and believed that it was essential for both to work together in order to attain true equality in regards to race and sex. 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. In another account by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, difficulties in segregating women resulted in African-American women marching with their respective States without hindrance. Among them was Ida B. Wells-Barnett, who marched with the Illinois delegation.
The end of the first wave is often linked with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, 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.
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." A Matrimonial Causes Act 1923 gave women the right to the same grounds for divorce as men. 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.
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.

State laws

The American states are separate sovereigns, with their own state constitutions, state governments, and state courts. All states have a legislative branch which enacts state statutes, an executive branch that promulgates state regulations pursuant to statutory authorization, and a judicial branch that applies, interprets, and occasionally overturns both state statutes and regulations, as well as local ordinances. States retain plenary power to make laws covering anything not preempted by the federal Constitution, federal statutes, or international treaties ratified by the federal Senate. Normally, state supreme courts are the final interpreters of state institutions and state law, unless their interpretation itself presents a federal issue, in which case a decision may be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court by way of a petition for writ of certiorari. State laws have dramatically diverged in the centuries since independence, to the extent that the United States cannot be regarded as one legal system as to the majority of types of law traditionally under state control, but must be regarded as 50 separate systems of tort law, family law, property law, contract law, criminal law, and so on.
Marylynn Salmon argues that each state developed different ways of dealing with a variety of legal issues pertaining to women, especially in the case of property laws. In 1809, Connecticut was the first state to pass a law allowing women to write wills.
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.

White Feminism: The Absent Contributions by Black Feminists

First Wave Feminism in the United States did not chronicle the contributions of black women to the same degree as white women. Activists, including Susan B. Anthony and other feminist leaders preached for equality between genders; however, they disregarded equality between a number of other issues, including race. This allowed for white women to gain power and equality relative to white men, while the social disparity between white and black women increased. The exclusion aided the growing prevalence of White supremacy, specifically white feminism while actively overlooking the severity of impact black feminists had on the movement.
Two Different Fights
The two different fights for black and White women's equality were present simultaneously and could not be separated during the First Wave of Feminism. White women were fighting for rights equal to white men in society. They wanted to correct the discrepancy in education, professional, property, economic, and voting rights. They also fought for birth control and abortion freedom. Black women, on the other hand, were ultimately fighting two “-isms”, racism and sexism, contributing to an uphill struggle for black feminists. While White women could not vote, black women and men could not vote. Mary J. Garrett who founded a group consisting of hundreds of Black women in New Orleans, said that black women strove for education and protection. It is true that “black women in higher education are isolated, underutilized, and often demoralized,” and they fought together against this. They were fighting against “exploitation by White men” and they wanted to “lead a virtuous and industrious life." Black women were also fighting for their husbands, families, and overall equality and freedom of their civil rights. Racism restricted white and black women from coming together to fight for common societal transformation.
Examples of Inequalities
It was not just through personal racism that black women were excluded from feminists movements; institutional racism prevented many women from having an avid say and stance. The National American Woman Suffrage Association, established by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. did not invite black women to attend specific meetings, excluding them entirely. Feminist and women's suffrage conventions held in Southern states, where black women were a dominant percentage of the population, were segregated.
Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were abolitionists but they did not advocate for universal suffrage. They both did not want black men to be granted the right to vote before white women. The National American Woman Suffrage Association was created to distinguish themselves from advocating for black men to vote. The 15th Amendment states no person should be denied the right to vote based on race. Anthony and Stanton opposed passage of the amendment unless it was accompanied by a Sixteenth Amendment that would guarantee suffrage for women. Otherwise, they said, it would create an "aristocracy of sex" by giving constitutional authority to the belief that men were superior to women. The new proposal of this amendment was named the “Anthony Amendment”. Stanton once said that allowing black men to vote before women “creates an antagonism between black men and all women that will culminate in fearful outrages on womanhood”. Anthony stated, she would “cut off this right arm of mine before I will ever work for or demand the ballot for the negro and not the woman”. Mary Church Terrell exclaimed in 1904 that, “My sisters of the dominant race, stand up not only for the oppressed sex, but also for the oppressed race!” The National American Woman Suffrage Association sustained the inequalities between black and white women and also limited their ability to contribute.
Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass together formed the American Equal Rights Association, advocating for equality between both gender and sex. In 1848, Frederick Douglass was asked to speak by Susan B. Anthony at a convention in Seneca Falls, New York. Frederick Douglass was an active supporter. Later, Douglass was not permitted to attend an Atlanta, Georgia NAWSA convention. Susan B. Anthony exclaimed, “I did not want to subject him to humiliation, and I did not want anything to get in the way of bringing the Southern white women into our suffrage association, now that their interest had been awakened”. Douglass opposed the fact that Cady and Anthony were extremely unsupportive of black voting rights. White women condoned racism at the cost of black women if it meant benefitting and more support of the white suffrage movement.
Institutional racism excluded black women in the March on Washington in 1913. Black women were asked to march separately, together, at the back of the parade. They were forced to be made absent which can be seen in the lack of photographs and media of black women marching in the parade. White women did not want black women associated with their movement because they believed white women would disaffiliate themselves from an integrated group and create a segregated, more powerful one.
Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman?” - Combining Forces
Despite participating and contributing a great deal to all feminists movements, black women were rarely recognized. Mary McLeod Bethune said that the world was unable to accept all of the contributions black women have made. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton together wrote the History of Woman Suffrage published in 1881. The book failed to give adequate recognition to the black women who were equally responsible for the change in United States history. Sojourner Truth became an influential advocate for the women's rights movement. In 1851 she delivered her “Ain’t I a Woman” speech at the women's rights convention in Akron, Ohio. Black women at this point were beginning to become empowered and assertive, speaking out on the disproportionate inequalities. Truth speaks of how she, and other women, are capable of working as much as men, after having thirteen children. This speech was one of the ways white and black women became closer to working towards fighting for the same thing. Another one of Truth's speeches at the American Equal Rights Association in New York in 1867 she said, ”If colored men get their rights, and not colored women theirs, you see the colored men will be masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it was before." Her speeches brought attention to the movement, for black women, but also for white. Although private lives continued to be segregated, feminist coalitions became integrated. Two separate reasons aided integration in the feminist movement. Paula Giddings wrote that the two fights against racism and sexism could not be separated. Gerda Lerner wrote that black women demonstrated they too were fully capable of fighting and creating change for equality.

Timeline

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Problems of conflicting interests, of the always-permeable dichotomies of hegemony and resistance, of internal contradictions and inadequacies within the notions of the "human," "rights," "freedom," and "liberalism," shaped 19th- and early 20th-century feminist ideology and praxis and continue to resonate in debates over gender, "race," class, and sexuality today. For Kyla Schuller in The Biopolitics of Feeling: Race, Sex, and Science in the Nineteenth Century, "biopower is feminism's enabling condition... movements for gender equality have materialized amid a field of power in which, at least since Malthus, the interdependence of reproduction and economics forms the primary field of the political." Schuller argues that " evolutionary notion of the distinct sexes of male and female, understood as specialized divergences in physiology, anatomy, and mental function that only the most civilized had achieved, was itself a racial hierarchy... the very idea of sex as a biological and political subjectivity is a product of the biopolitical logics unfolding hand in hand with the sciences of species change." Schuller quotes Canadian philosopher Michelle Murphy in Seizing the Means of Reproduction: Entanglements of Feminism, Health, and Technoscience: "Historicizing feminisms as a biopolitics that has taken 'sex,' and its subsidiary, 'reproduction,' as central concerns requires that we understand feminisms in all their variety and contradiction as animated within - and not escaping from - dominant configurations of governance and technoscience." From this perspective, 19th- and early 20th-century feminisms reproduced the very social hierarchies they had the potential to struggle against, exemplifying the claim of Michel Foucault in his The History of Sexuality, Volume I: An Introduction that "resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power."
First-wave feminism offered no intersectional perspective. Gender was not thought of as a social construction, nor was the roles that each gender plays thought of as sexist. This time period also focused on biological differences, and that only the way to be considered a woman was through biology or sex. It did not consider and fight for women of color, or women of lower socioeconomic status. It also reinforced and made colonization stronger, as well increasing the eroticization of women from different nations. First-wave theorists also leave out all of the activism women of color contributed. Activists like Maria Stewart, and Frances E. W. Harper are hardly mentioned with any credit for the abolitionist or suffrage movements during this time period. First wave feminism is male centric meaning it was made in the form of the way men see women. Another issue with First-Wave feminism is that the white, middle-class women were able to decide what is a woman problem and what is not. First-wave lacked the sexual freedom women aspired to have but could not have while men could. It is also said that many of the white fundamental First Wave feminists were in alliance with women of color but stayed silent when they figured they could reach progression for middle class, white women.