Feminism In The 1800s

Feminism is the advocacy for women’s rights and equality of the sexes that originated earlier than what people today may believe. The earliest acts and ideas of feminism have been traced back to ancient Greece, but the most well-known time period that fueled the feminist movement can be traced down to the 1800s. Studies made by the Washington Post and Kaiser Family Foundation reveal that a group of Americans, today, do not understand the true values and ideals of the feminist movement. A majority of the people that voted against the feminist movement and claimed they are not a feminist come from the older male population. In this survey, 63% of the male population that was 65+ did not agree with the agenda, and have not participated in any
As explained in “A Brief History: The Three Waves of Feminism,” “Women in the late 19th to early 20th centuries realized that they must first gain political power to bring about change…” This was especially true after the 15th amendment was passed, which gave African Americans the right to vote. During this time, women were angry and began to fight. However, this event also caused a disruption in the women’s rights movement. This came about due to some women opposing the amendment, while others were supportive of it. Women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony were opposed to this amendment and felt like it was dangerous for women’s suffrage. Other women like Lucy Stone felt that the 15th amendment was taking the U.S. in the right direction and was helping women’s suffrage rather than hindering it. The end result was a split in the women’s suffrage movement, which was mended later on when these two different groups came back together and formed the National American Women’s Suffrage Association, or the NAWSA. This group of women worked endlessly to obtain the right to vote, and the NAWSA was seen as a big step for women in the United States. There are many other factors that helped fuel the feminist movement, and many of them were not solely focused on political rights. There were multiple civil issues that had to be fixed by first ensuring that women’s voices were going to be heard. The amount of fuel and support that was gained by these feminist groups also caused various types of new movements to be created. “There are the ego-cultural feminists, the radicals, the liberal/reforms, the electoral, academic, ecofeminist…,”(A Brief History: The Three Waves of Feminism) but there are many other kinds of feminists that are also fighting. That being said, it can be clearly seen that the feminist movement has certainly evolved into something more diverse and open than it once was.