First-Wave Feminism
First-wave feminism – the first major phase of organized feminist activism, focused primarily on achieving legal and political equality between women and men. Its principal demands included women’s suffrage, equal access to education and professional employment, property rights, reform of marriage legislation, and recognition of women’s full civil and political status (Garner & Munford, 2010; DuBois, 2020).
The Women’s Rights Convention held in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848 is widely regarded as a landmark in the emergence of the organized women’s rights movement in the United States. However, feminist demands had been articulated earlier, and the development of women’s movements followed different historical trajectories across countries. The outbreak of the First World War in 1914 did not mark a definitive end to first-wave feminism. The struggle for women’s political equality continued into the interwar period, with major achievements including the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1920 and the establishment of equal voting rights for women and men in Britain in 1928 (McMillen, 2008; DuBois, 2020; Garner & Munford, 2010).
First-wave feminism encompassed diverse ideological approaches and political strategies. These included liberal feminism, suffragism, militant suffrage activism, advocacy of women’s specific rights and legal protections, welfare feminism, and anarchist feminism. Although these currents differed in their understanding of women’s interests and the means of achieving emancipation, they contributed to challenging women’s exclusion from political, economic, and public life.
Prominent figures associated with first-wave feminism and related women’s emancipation movements include Harriet Taylor Mill, John Stuart Mill, Lydia Becker, Emmeline Pankhurst, Emma Goldman, and others. Their political and theoretical positions reflected the diversity of the early women’s rights movement.
References
DuBois, E. C. (2020). Suffrage: Women’s long battle for the vote. Simon & Schuster.
Garner, K., & Munford, R. (2010). Feminism. In M. Ryan (Ed.), The encyclopedia of literary and cultural theory. Wiley-Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444337839.wbelctv2f002
McMillen, S. G. (2008). Seneca Falls and the origins of the women’s rights movement. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195182651.001.0001
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