feminism

 

1st Wave Feminism

First-wave feminism refers to a period of feminist activity during the 19th and early twentieth century in the United Kingdom, Canada, the Netherlands and the United States. It focused on inequalities, primarily on gaining women's suffrage (the right to vote).

 

First wave feminists spent hundreds of years in activism, writing, protesting and working for the betterment and equality of their sex and gender. First wave feminists worked not only for suffrage, or the right to vote, but also for the right to an education, the right to work, the right to work safely, the right to the money they earned when they worked, the right to a divorce, the right to their children and the right to themselves and their own bodies.

 

The late 1800s through the early 1900s was a time when the age at which Americans first married was rising, and the number of men and women who stayed single was growing, too. Women formed intense friendships with each other. Those bonds helped to sustain the activism of the first-wave feminists. Their goals were primarily political. When they succeeded in getting the vote in 1920, women of all marital statuses were empowered.

                         Article: Living Single           

 

first wave feminism founding beliefs;

• Disadvantages;
• Required approval of male voters,
• forced to adopt any argument necessary
• intensified racism, nativism and class bias                 

After the votes;

• Birth control pills were available 
• expansion of education opportunities
• crusade against lynching and other race based violence and injustice
• fight for improved working conditions