Feminism

History

Feminism traces its roots to the Enlightenment, when thinkers such as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and the Marquis de Condorcet championed women's education. Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Women,published in 1792, may be the earliest feminist writing of the modern age.

The first wave of feminism and the women's movement began in the early 19th century among abolitionists, especially women abolitionists, who began to draw comparisons between the oppression of the slaves and the position of women in society; neither could own property in their own name, vote, sit on a jury, or testify in a court of law. In 1848 the first women's rights convention was held at Seneca Falls, New York, organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. The suffrage movement won victory finally with the passage of the 19th Amendment, which in 1920 granted women the right to vote. After this achievement, the first wave of feminist activism died down for about 50 years, as many women and men assumed that with the vote, equality was assured.

The second wave of the feminist movement had its first stirrings during World War II, when women took on factory and other war-related work for the men who had gone overseas. Women also played a significant role in the military for the first time. Day care was provided for the children of working mothers, who were told they could accomplish anything. After the end of the war, the propaganda reversed; women were sent home to their children, who they were told now needed them at home, and consequently some women felt let down and deceived. Betty Friedan's book The Feminine Mystique, published in 1963,described what many women were feeling, a sense of malaise and purposelessness that led to feelings of despair and deep unhappiness.

Two prongs of feminism were important from the start: During the1970s, organizations such as the National Organization for Women worked for legislation guaranteeing women equal opportunity in the workforce and equal rights under the law. Discrimination on the basis of gender became illegal, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and other enforcement agencies backed up the laws. At the same time, women were making enormous strides in academia and altering the way gender was treated in research and scholarly endeavor. Out of this intellectual ferment, with cross-pollination from the world of social activism, various strains of feminist theory emerged.

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