Feminism in History

FEMINISM IN HISTORY

In this paper I am going to define and try to explain what Feminism is, when it started and what it consists in.

First of all, I want to show what the Spanish Language Dictionary (Diccionario de la Real Academia Española) says when looking at the word FEMINISM, and we find two meanings: 1. “Social doctrine in favour of woman, to whom it gives capacity and rights reserved before to man”; 2. “Movement which demands the same for women to men” (http://www.wordreference.com/es/en/frames.asp?es=feminismo).

There are other definitions that I have found, this is one: Feminism: “Social doctrine in favour of women’s conditions which gives her rights and opportunities reserved until now to men. (http://www.definicion.org/feminismo)

We find the origins of the Feminism Movement in the French Revolution, in 1789, and other liberal revolutions. They were looking for legal rights, freedom and political rights, when the contradiction started which marked the first feminism, because the liberties and rights and legal equality did not affect women. Up to this moment, the Feminist Movement was started in Europe and North America, which fought for women equality and her liberation. (http://clio.rediris.es/udidactica/sufragismo2/origfem.htm).

Mary_Wollstonecraft In Britain, Mary Wollstonecraft was the first who wrote in favour of feminism, and she started, with her work “Vindication of women Rights” (1792) the long tradition of the Anglo-Saxon feminism. She was against the kings’ absolutism, and pointed out the connection between the political system and the power relations between genres. Men exerted a real absolutist tyranny over women on family and house. She thought that the key to overcome female subordination was education. New educated women would achieve not only equality with man, but they would develop their economic independence by acceding work. Nevertheless, Wollstonecraft did not pay attention to politic claims and she did not refer to the female vote right.

John_Stuart_Mill A man, John Stuart Mill, together with his wife, Harriet Taylor Mill, published “Women Submission”, in 1869. Mill locates the centre of the feminist debate that the solution of the feminine question was the elimination of every legal and discriminatory impediment. When suppressed these restrictions, women would break their submission and they would achieve their emancipation. The individual freedom provided by the disappearance of legal obstacles would permit the development of women’s personalities and capacities.

Mill’s text had a big impact. It appeared in 1869, it was an important element for the expansion and internationalization of the suffragette movement. It caused the interest of many women between the high-classes.

John Stuart Mill presented a demand in favour of the female vote to the English Parliament in 1866. Its rejection caused, in 1867, the beginning of the first British suffragette movement: the “National Society for Woman’s Suffrage”, lead by Lydia Becker. (http://clio.rediris.es/udidactica/sufragismo2/primfemgb.htm)

In the USA the Feminist Movement was consolidated because of the social, political and economical conditions typical of the American society. From a democratic politic system, feminism began linked to the protestant movements in a religious way which proposed a moral regeneration of the society and the abolitionism. The participation of women in humanitarian movements in favour of the abolition of slavery helped women to understand. The analogy between no-right slaves and women was evident.

Social and cultural conditions in the USA were especially in favour to the extension of feminine movements, religious protestant practices promoted reading and individual interpretation of holy texts, which favoured the access of women to a basic level of literacy, so the feminine analphabetism was practically eradicated at the beginning of the 19^th century. Very different from Europe, from about the middle of the 19^th century, where we find a lot of educated, middle-class women, who were the thrust of the first feminism.

The first collective document of north-American feminism is the “Seneca Falls Declaration”, approved on July 19^th, 1848. In this document was expressed for the first time what we could name a “feminist philosophy of history”. A philosophy which denounced all the humiliations that women have suffered during the history.

Elisabeth_Cady_Staton Susan_B__Anthony After the War of Secession (1861-1865), the feminist movement suffered a disillusion. The 14^th correction of the Constitution, which granted the vote right to liberated black slaves, denied the suffrage right to women. The reaction was immediate, and two women, Elisabeth Candy Stanton and Susan B. Anthony created the “National Woman Suffrage Association”, first American radical feminist association, independent of political parties and other reform movements. (http://clio.rediris.es/udidactica/sufragismo2/inicfemusa.htm)

To conclude this paper, I would like to add two quotations, one by Nuria Varela, and the other by Mary Wollstonecraft:

“Feminism is an impertinent that questions the order established since it was born, and women, 18^th century impertinents ended up at the guillotine while men thought that liberties and rights only corresponded to males”(Nuria Verala, Feminismo para principiantes).

“I declare myself against every power based on prejudices although they are old” (Mary Wollstonecraft).

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