History of feminism

The earliest works on 'the woman question' criticised the restrictive role of women without necessarily claiming that women were disadvantaged or that men were to blame. Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is one of the few works written before the 19th century that can unambiguously be called feminist. By modern standards her metaphor of women as nobility, the elite of society, coddled, fragile and in danger of intellectual and moral sloth, does not sound like a feminist argument. Wollstonecraft believed that both sexes contributed to this situation and took it for granted that women had considerable power over men.

Feminism is generally said to have begun in the 19th century as people increasingly adopted the perception that women are oppressed in a male-centered society (see patriarchy). The feminist movement is rooted in the West and especially in the reform movement of the 19th century. The organised movement is dated from the first women's rights convention at Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848.

Emmeline Pankhurst was one of the founders of the suffragette movement and aimed to reveal the institutional sexism in British society, forming the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). Often the repeated jailing by the Cat and Mouse Act, for trivial misdemeanours in activism, inspired members to go on hunger strikes, and because of the resultant force feeding that was the practice, caused these members to be very ill, serving to draw attention to the brutality of the legal system at the time and to further their cause.

Over a century and a half the movement has grown to include diverse perspectives on what constitutes discrimination against women. Early feminists and primary feminist movements are often called the first wave and feminists after about 1960 the second wave. There is a so called third wave, but feminists disagree as to its necessity, its benefits, and its ideas. These three "waves" are known as such, because, like waves on a beach, each wave comes on top of the one before, drawing on each other.

Feminism in many forms

The name "feminism" suggests a single kind of ideology, when this has not been the case. Feminist ideas, due to the historical situation and the current legal status of women in certain countries, and many other factors, has impelled feminist ideology to move in different direction to achieve its goals. As such, there are many different kinds of feminism.