First-wave feminism

First-wave feminism was a period of feminist activity and thought, that occurred within the time period of the 19th and early 20th century throughout the world. It focused on legal issues, primarily on gaining women's suffrage (the right to vote).

Feminism has its source in the 18th century, specifically in the Enlightenment. In this cultural and philosophical movement there was a controversy over equality and gender differences. At the time appeared a new critical discourse that used the universal categories of this political philosophy. Enlightenment movement therefore was not feminist at its roots.

The political origins of feminism came from The French Revolution (1789). This event raised legal equality, freedoms and political rights as its central objectives but soon came the great contradiction that marked the struggle of early feminism: freedoms, rights and legal equality that had been the great conquests of the liberal revolutions didn´t affect women. Rousseau's political theory designed the exclusion of women from the field of property and rights. So in the French Revolution the voice of women began to express themselves collectively.

The term first-wave was coined in March 1968 by Martha Lear writing in The New York Times Magazine, who at the same time also used the term "second-wave feminism". At that time, the women's movement was focused on de facto (unofficial) inequalities, which it wished to distinguish from the objectives of the earlier feminists.

According to Miriam Schneir, Simone de Beauvoir wrote that the first woman to "take up her pen in defense of her sex" was Christine de Pizan in the 15th century.Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa and Modesta di Pozzo di Forzi worked in the 16th century.Marie Le Jars de Gournay, Anne Bradstreet and François Poullain de la Barre wrote in the 17th.

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