The history of feminism comprises the narratives (chronological or thematic) of the movements and ideologies which have aimed at equal rights for women. While feminists around the world have differed in causes, goals, and intentions depending on time, culture, and country, most Western feminist historians assert that all movements that work to obtain women's rights should be considered feminist movements, even when they did not (or do not) apply the term to themselves. Some other historians limit the term "feminist" to the modern feminist movement and its progeny, and use the label "protofeminist" to describe earlier movements.
Modern Western feminist history is conventionally split into time periods, or "waves", each with slightly different aims based on prior progress:
First-wave feminism of the 19th and early 20th centuries focused on overturning legal inequalities, particularly addressing issues of women's suffrage Second-wave feminism (1960s–1980s) broadened debate to include cultural inequalities, gender norms, and the role of women in society Third-wave feminism (1990s–2000s) refers to diverse strains of feminist activity, seen by third-wavers themselves both as a continuation of the second wave and as a response to its perceived failuresKrolokke, Charlotte and Anne Scott Sorensen, "From Suffragettes to Grrls" in Gender Communication Theories and Analyses: From Silence to Performance (Sage, 2005). Fourth-wave feminism (early 2010s–present) expands on the third wave's focus on intersectionality, emphasizing body positivity, trans-inclusivity, and an open discourse about rape culture in the social media era
Although the "waves" construct has been commonly used to describe the history of feminism, the concept has also been criticized by non-White feminists for ignoring and erasing the history between the "waves", by choosing to focus solely on a few famous figures, on the perspective of a white bourgeois woman and on popular events, and for being racist and colonialist.
Early feminism
People and activists who discuss or advance women's equality prior to the existence of the feminist movement are sometimes labeled as protofeminist. Some scholars criticize this term because they believe it diminishes the importance of earlier contributions or that feminism does not have a single begin or linear history as implied by terms such as protofeminist or postfeminist.Cott, Nancy F. "What's In a Name? The Limits of 'Social Feminism'; or, Expanding the Vocabulary of Women's History". Journal of American History 76 (December 1989): 809–829
Around 24 centuries ago,The Columbia Encyclopedia (Columbia Univ. Press, 5th ed. 1993()), entry Plato. Plato, according to Elaine Hoffman Baruch, "[argued] for the total political and sexual equality of women, advocating that they be members of his highest class, ... those who rule and fight".Baruch, Elaine Hoffman, Women in Men's Utopias, in Rohrlich, Ruby, & Elaine Hoffman Baruch, eds., Women in Search of Utopia, op. cit., p. and see p. 211 (Plato supporting "child care" so women could be soldiers), citing, at p. n. 1, Plato, trans. Francis MacDonald Cornford, The Republic (N.Y.: Oxford Univ. Press, 1973), Book V.
Andal, a female Tamil saint, lived around the 7th or 8th century. She is well known for writing Tiruppavai. Andal has inspired women's groups such as Goda Mandali.Women's Lives, Women's Rituals in the Hindu Tradition;page 186 Her divine marriage to Vishnu is viewed by some as a feminist act, as it allowed her to avoid the regular duties of being a wife and gain autonomy. In the 12th century, the Waldensians Christian sect espoused some feminist ideas.
Renaissance Feminism Italian-French writer Christine de Pizan (1364 – ), the author of The Book of the City of Ladies and Epître au Dieu d'Amour (Epistle to the God of Love) is cited by Simone de Beauvoir as the first woman to denounce misogyny and write about the relation of the sexes. Christine de Pizan also wrote one of the early fictional accounts of gender transition in Le Livre de la mutation de fortune. Other early feminist writers include the 16th-century writers Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Modesta di Pozzo di Forzi, and Jane Anger, and the 17th-century writers Hannah Woolley in England, Juana Inés de la Cruz in Mexico, Marie Le Jars de Gournay, Anne Bradstreet, Anna Maria van Schurman and François Poullain de la Barre. The emergence of women as true intellectuals effected change also in Italian humanism. Cassandra Fedele was the first woman to join a humanist group and achieved much despite greater constraints on women.
Renaissance defenses of women are present in a variety of literary genre and across Europe with a central claim of equality. Feminists appealed to principles that progressively lead to discourse of economic property injustice themes. Feminizing society was a way for women at this time to use literature to create interdependent and non-hierarchical systems that provided opportunities for both women and men.
Men have also played an important role in the history of defending that women are capable and able to compete equally with men, including Antonio Cornazzano, Vespasiano da Bisticci, and Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti. Castiglione continues this trend of defending woman's moral character and that traditions are at fault for the appearance of women's inferiority. However, the critique is that there is no advocacy for social change, leaving her out of the political sphere, and abandoning her to traditional domestic roles. Although, many of them would encourage that if women were to be included in the political sphere it would be a natural consequence of their education. In addition, some of these men state that men are at fault for the lack of knowledge of intellectual women by leaving them out of historical records.
One of the most important 17th-century feminist writers in the English language was Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.[Kegl, Rosemary. "'The World I Have Made': Margaret Cavendish, feminism and the Blazing World", in Valerie Traub, M. Lindsay Kaplan, and Dympna Callaghan (eds), Feminist Readings of Early Modern Culture: Emerging Subjects, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 119-141.] Her knowledge was recognized by some, such as protofeminist Bathsua Makin, who wrote that "The present Dutchess of New-Castle, by her own Genius, rather than any timely Instruction, over-tops many grave Grown-Men," and considered her a prime example of what women could become through education.
17th century Margaret Fell's most famous work is "Women's Speaking Justified", a scripture-based argument for women's ministry, and one of the major texts on women's religious leadership in the 17th century.Margaret Fell, ""Women's Speaking Justified, Proved, and Allowed of by the Scriptures, All such as speak by the Spirit and Power of the Lord Jesus ", Quaker Heritage Press Online Texts. In this short pamphlet, Fell based her argument for equality of the sexes on one of the basic premises of Quakerism, namely spiritual equality. Her belief was that God created all human beings, therefore both men and women were capable of not only possessing the Inner Light but also the ability to be a prophet. Fell has been described as a "feminist pioneer".
In 1622, Marie de Gournay published The Equality of Men and Women, in which she argued for equality of the sexes.
18th century: the Age of Enlightenment The Age of Enlightenment was characterized by secular intellectual reasoning and a flowering of philosophical writing. Many Enlightenment philosophers defended the rights of women, including Jeremy Bentham (1781), Marquis de Condorcet (1790), and Mary Wollstonecraft (1792).Tomalin, Claire. The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft. 144–155. Rev. ed. 1974. New York: Penguin, 1992. Other important writers of the time that expressed feminist views included Abigail Adams, Catharine Macaulay, and Hedvig Charlotta Nordenflycht.
Jeremy Bentham The English utilitarian and classical liberal philosopher Jeremy Bentham said that it was the placing of women in a legally inferior position that made him choose the career of a reformist at the age of eleven, though American critic John Neal claimed to have convinced him to take up women's rights issues during their association between 1825 and 1827. Bentham spoke for complete equality between sexes including the rights to vote and to participate in government. He opposed the asymmetrical sexual moral standards between men and women.Miriam Williford, Bentham on the rights of Women
In his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1781), Bentham strongly condemned many countries' common practice to deny women's rights due to allegedly inferior minds.Miriam Williford, Bentham on the rights of Women , Journal of the History of Ideas, 1975. Bentham gave many examples of able female regents.
Marquis de Condorcet Nicolas de Condorcet was a mathematician, classical liberal politician, leading French Revolutionary, republican, and Voltairean anti-clericalist. He was also a fierce defender of human rights, including the equality of women and the abolition of slavery, unusual for the 1780s. He advocated for women's suffrage in the new government in 1790 with De l'admission des femmes au droit de cité (For the Admission to the Rights of Citizenship For Women) and an article for Journal de la Société de 1789.Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet, On the Admission of Women to the Rights of Citizenship (1790), The First Essay on the Political Rights of Women. A Translation of Condorcet's Essay "Sur l'admission des femmes aux droits de Cité" (On the Admission of Women to the Rights of Citizenship). By Dr. Alice Drysdale Vickery (with preface and remarks) (Letchworth: Garden City Press, 1912).David Williams,"Condorcet, Feminism, and the Egalitarian Principle." Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 5 (1976): 151+.Barbara Brookes, "The feminism of Condorcet and Sophie de Grouchy." Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 189 (1980): 314+
Olympe de Gouges and a Declaration Following de Condorcet's repeated, yet failed, appeals to the National Assembly in 1789 and 1790, Olympe de Gouges (in association with the Society of the Friends of Truth) authored and published the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen in 1791. This was another plea for the French Revolutionary government to recognize the natural and political rights of women."LES DROITS DE LA FEMME - Olympe de Gouges". www.olympedegouges.eu. Retrieved 2015-11-30. De Gouges wrote the Declaration in the prose of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, almost mimicking the failure of men to include more than a half of the French population in egalité. Even though the Declaration did not immediately accomplish its goals, it did set a precedent for a manner in which feminists could satirize their governments for their failures in equality, seen in documents such as A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and A Declaration of Sentiments.Carla Hesse, The Other Enlightenment: How French Women Became Modern(2001), 42.
Wollstonecraft and A Vindication
Perhaps the most cited feminist writer of the time was Mary Wollstonecraft. She identified the education and upbringing of women as creating their limited expectations based on a self-image dictated by the typically male perspective.Alexander, Meena. Women in Romanticism: Mary Wollstonecraft, Dorothy Wordsworth, and Mary Shelley. NY: Rowman and Littlefield (1989), 40 Despite her perceived inconsistencies (Miriam Brody referred to the "Two Wollstonecrafts") reflective of problems that had no easy answers, this book remains a foundation stone of feminist thought.