For the political aspects of feminism, see woman suffrage woman suffrage, the right of women to vote. Throughout the latter part of the 19th cent. the issue of women's voting rights was an important phase of feminism .
..... Click the link for more information. .
History
Women traditionally had been regarded as inferior to men physically and intellectually. Both law and theology had ordered their subjection. Women could not possess property in their own names, engage in business, or control the disposal of their children or even of their own persons. Although Mary Astell Astell, Mary (ăs`təl), 1666–1731, English author and feminist.
..... Click the link for more information. and others had pleaded earlier for larger opportunities for women, the first feminist document was Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792). In the French Revolution, women's republican clubs demanded that liberty, equality, and fraternity be applied regardless of sex, but this movement was extinguished for the time by the Code Napoléon.
In North America, although Abigail Adams and Mercy Otis Warren pressed for the inclusion of women's emancipation in the Constitution, the feminist movement really dates from 1848, when Elizabeth Cady Stanton Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 1815–1902, American reformer, a leader of the woman-suffrage movement, b. Johnstown, N.Y. She was educated at the Troy Female Seminary (now Emma Willard School) in Troy, N.Y.
..... Click the link for more information. , Lucretia Coffin Mott James Mott, 1788–1868, whom she married in 1811, was also a Quaker who worked constantly for the antislavery cause and for woman suffrage. He was a delegate to the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London, and he presided (1848) at the first national women's rights convention
..... Click the link for more information. , and others, in a women's convention at Seneca Falls, N.Y., issued a declaration of independence for women, demanding full legal equality, full educational and commercial opportunity, equal compensation, the right to collect wages, and the right to vote. Led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan Brownell Anthony Anthony, Susan Brownell, 1820–1906, American reformer and leader of the woman-suffrage movement, b. Adams, Mass.; daughter of Daniel Anthony, Quaker abolitionist.
..... Click the link for more information. , the movement spread rapidly and soon extended to Europe.
Little by little, women's demands for higher education, entrance into trades and professions, married women's rights to property, and the right to vote were conceded. In the United States after woman suffrage was won in 1920, women were divided on the question of equal standing with men (advocated by the National Woman's party) versus some protective legislation; various forms of protective legislation had been enacted in the 19th cent., e.g., limiting the number of hours women could work per week and excluding women from certain high-risk occupations.
In 1946 the UN Commission on the Status of Women was established to secure equal political rights, economic rights, and educational opportunities for women throughout the world. In the 1960s feminism experienced a rebirth, especially in the United States. The National Organization for Women National Organization for Women (NOW), group founded (1966) to support "full equality for women in America in a truly equal partnership with men." Its founder and first president was feminist leader Betty Friedan , author of The Feminine Mystique (1963).
..... Click the link for more information. (NOW), formed in 1966, had over 400 local chapters by the early 1970s. NOW, the National Women's Political Caucus, and other groups pressed for such changes as abortion rights, federally supported child care centers, equal pay for women, the occupational upgrading of women, the removal of all legal and social barriers to education, political influence, and economic power for women.
With the leadership of women such as Bella Abzug Abzug, Bella Savitsky (səvĭt`skē ăb`z
g), 1920–98, U.S.
..... Click the link for more information. , Betty Friedan Friedan, Betty Naomi, 1921–2006, American social reformer and feminist, b. Peoria, Ill. as Bettye Goldstein, educated at Smith College (B.A., 1942) and the Univ. of California at Berkeley.
..... Click the link for more information. , and Gloria Steinem Steinem, Gloria (stīn`əm), 1934–, American journalist and feminist, b. Toledo, Ohio, grad. Smith College (B.A., 1956).
..... Click the link for more information. , the Equal Rights Amendment was pushed through Congress in 1972, but by 1982 it fell short of ratification. While Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibited discrimination based on sex, the Roe v. Wade Roe v. Wade, case decided in 1973 by the U.S. Supreme Court. Along with Doe v. Bolton, this decision legalized abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy.
..... Click the link for more information. court decision, legalizing abortion, energized an antiabortion, antifeminist backlash. Nevertheless, the movement begun in the 1960s resulted in a large number of women moving into the workplace (59.8% of civilian women over age 16 were working in 1997, compared to 37.7% in 1960) and in broad changes in society.
Bibliography
See J. S. Mill, The Subjection of Women (1867); S. de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (tr. 1952, repr. 1968); B. Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (1963); G. Greer, The Female Eunuch (1970); K. Millett, Sexual Politics (1970); J. Hole and E. Levine, Rebirth of Feminism (1971); E. Janeway, Man's World, Woman's Place (1971); J. B. Elshtain, The Family in Political Thought (1982); D. Spender, ed., Feminist Theorists (1984); J. S. Chafetz and A. B. Dworkin, Female Revolt (1986); A. C. Rich, Of Woman Born (1986); H. L. Moore, Feminism and Anthropology (1988); B. Aptheker, Tapestries of Life: Women's Work, Women's Consciousness (1989); N. F. Cott, Grounding of Modern Feminism (1989); A. Ferguson, Blood at the Root (1989); W. L. O'Neill, Feminism in America (1989); D. E. Smith, The Everyday World as Problematic (1989); S. L. Bartky, Femininity and Domination (1990); M. Jacobs et al. Body/Politics: Women and the Discourses of Science (1990); S. Ganew, A Reader in Feminist Knowledge (1991); E. Cunningham, The Return of The Goddess: A Divine Comedy (1992); B. S. Anderson, Joyous Greetings: The First International Women's Movement, 1830–1860 (2000); R. Rosen, The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed America (2000).
feminism
Social movement that seeks equal rights for women. Widespread concern for women's rights dates from the Enlightenment; its first important expression was Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). The 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, convened by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and others, called for full legal equality with men, including full educational opportunity and equal compensation; thereafter the woman suffrage movement began to gather momentum. From America the movement spread to Europe. American women gained the right to vote by constitutional amendment in 1920, but their participation in the workplace remained limited, and prevailing notions tended to confine women to the home. Milestones in the rise of modern feminism included Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex (1949) and Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963) and the founding in 1966 of the National Organization for Women. See also Equal Rights Amendment; women's liberation movement.
feminism
Feminism
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