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Aug 3, 2022 · Last updated: Aug 2, 2022 • 6 min read. From ecofeminism to mainstream feminism, there are many variations within the prolific socio-cultural movement. Read on for a brief history of the movement and a breakdown of the different types of feminism.
- Overview
- The ancient world
- Influence of the Enlightenment
At its core, feminism is the belief in full social, economic, and political equality for women. Feminism largely arose in response to Western traditions that restricted the rights of women, but feminist thought has global manifestations and variations.
Who were some early feminist thinkers and activists?
In medieval France philosopher Christine de Pisan challenged the social restrictions on women and pushed for women’s education. In 18th-century England Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman became a seminal work of English-language feminist philosophy. Feminism in the United States had a number of prominent activists during the mid- to late-19th century. Notable mainstream activists included Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony. Less mainstream but similarly important views came from Sojourner Truth, a formerly enslaved Black woman, and Emma Goldman, the nation’s leading anarchist during the late 19th century.
What is intersectional feminism?
Intersectionality is a term coined by professor Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989 to describe how different social categories interact, sometimes resulting in compounding effects and tensions. Her paper on the subject argued that discrimination specifically against Black women is different from general anti-woman discrimination or anti-Black racism. Instead, it involves the unique compound experience of both sexism and racism. Initially used in the context of discrimination law, the concept saw a resurgence in the 21st century among left-wing activists who broadened intersectionality to include categories such as class and sexual orientation.
How have feminist politics changed the world?
There is scant evidence of early organized protest against such circumscribed status. In the 3rd century bce, Roman women filled the Capitoline Hill and blocked every entrance to the Forum when consul Marcus Porcius Cato resisted attempts to repeal laws limiting women’s use of expensive goods. “If they are victorious now, what will they not attempt?” Cato cried. “As soon as they begin to be your equals, they will have become your superiors.”
That rebellion proved exceptional, however. For most of recorded history, only isolated voices spoke out against the inferior status of women, presaging the arguments to come. In late 14th- and early 15th-century France, the first feminist philosopher, Christine de Pisan, challenged prevailing attitudes toward women with a bold call for female education. Her mantle was taken up later in the century by Laura Cereta, a 15th-century Venetian woman who published Epistolae familiares (1488; “Personal Letters”; Eng. trans. Collected Letters of a Renaissance Feminist), a volume of letters dealing with a panoply of women’s complaints, from denial of education and marital oppression to the frivolity of women’s attire.
The defense of women had become a literary subgenre by the end of the 16th century, when Il merito delle donne (1600; The Worth of Women), a feminist broadside by another Venetian author, Moderata Fonte, was published posthumously. Defenders of the status quo painted women as superficial and inherently immoral, while the emerging feminists produced long lists of women of courage and accomplishment and proclaimed that women would be the intellectual equals of men if they were given equal access to education.
The so-called “debate about women” did not reach England until the late 16th century, when pamphleteers and polemicists joined battle over the true nature of womanhood. After a series of satiric pieces mocking women was published, the first feminist pamphleteer in England, writing as Jane Anger, responded with Jane Anger, Her Protection for Women (1589). This volley of opinion continued for more than a century, until another English author, Mary Astell, issued a more reasoned rejoinder in A Serious Proposal to the Ladies (1694, 1697). The two-volume work suggested that women inclined neither toward marriage nor a religious vocation should set up secular convents where they might live, study, and teach.
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The feminist voices of the Renaissance never coalesced into a coherent philosophy or movement. This happened only with the Enlightenment, when women began to demand that the new reformist rhetoric about liberty, equality, and natural rights be applied to both sexes.
Initially, Enlightenment philosophers focused on the inequities of social class and caste to the exclusion of gender. Swiss-born French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, for example, portrayed women as silly and frivolous creatures, born to be subordinate to men. In addition, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which defined French citizenship after the revolution of 1789, pointedly failed to address the legal status of women.
Female intellectuals of the Enlightenment were quick to point out this lack of inclusivity and the limited scope of reformist rhetoric. Olympe de Gouges, a noted playwright, published Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne (1791; “Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the [Female] Citizen”), declaring women to be not only man’s equal but his partner. The following year Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), the seminal English-language feminist work, was published in England. Challenging the notion that women exist only to please men, she proposed that women and men be given equal opportunities in education, work, and politics. Women, she wrote, are as naturally rational as men. If they are silly, it is only because society trains them to be irrelevant.
The Age of Enlightenment turned into an era of political ferment marked by revolutions in France, Germany, and Italy and the rise of abolitionism. In the United States, feminist activism took root when female abolitionists sought to apply the concepts of freedom and equality to their own social and political situations. Their work brought them in contact with female abolitionists in England who were reaching the same conclusions. By the mid-19th century, issues surrounding feminism had added to the tumult of social change, with ideas being exchanged across Europe and North America.
- The first wave in the late 19th-century was not the first appearance of feminist ideals, but it was the first real political movement for the Western world.
- Second-wave feminism took place in the 1960s and ‘70s. It built on first-wave feminism and challenged what women’s role in society should be.
- Thanks to the institutional victories of second-wave feminism, women enjoyed more rights and power going into the 1990s. They were able to think about other aspects of their identity, welcoming individuality and rebellion.
- Some people think we’re still in the third wave of feminism since the fourth wave isn’t so much of a shift as the continued growth of the movement.
Mar 2, 2022 · Because of these generational differences, it’s common to hear feminism divided into four distinct waves, each roughly corresponding to a different time period.
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- 5 min
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