First Wave Feminism Essay

Feminism has undergone three waves of activity. First-wave feminism alludes to a developed time of women's activist movement amid the nineteenth century and mid twentieth century in the United Kingdom and the United States. Initially it concentrated on the promotion of equal contract and property rights for women and the opposition to chattel marriage and ownership of married women (and their children) by their husbands. However, by the end of the nineteenth century, activism focused primarily on gaining political power, particularly the right of women's suffrage. Yet, feminists such as Voltairine de Cleyre and Margaret Sanger were still active in campaigning for women's sexual, reproductive, and economic rights at this time. In 1854, Florence
The Representation of the People Act 1918 was passed granting the vote to women who were more than thirty years old, and owned houses. In 1928 this was extended to all women over twenty-one. In the United States, leaders of this movement included Lucretia Mott, Lucy Stone, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony, who fought for the abolition of slavery prior to championing women's right to vote; all were strongly inspired by the thought of Quakers. American first-wave feminism involved a great deal of different women. Some, such as For instance, Frances Willard was a conservative Christian who belonged to Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Another example is Matilda Joslyn Gage was more radical, and expressed herself within the National Woman Suffrage Association or individually. American first-wave feminism turned to an end when the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (1919) was passed, granting women the right to vote in all
The researcher Imelda Whelehan argues that the second wave was a continuation of the prior period of women's liberation including the suffragettes in the UK and USA. Second-wave feminism has kept on existing since that time and exists together with what is termed third-wave women's liberation. The researcher Estelle Freedman analyzes first and second-wave feminism saying that the first wave concentrated on rights such as, suffrage, while the second wave was to a great extent worried with different issues of equality such as ending sexual segregation. The feminist activist and author Carol Hanisch coined the slogan "The Personal is Political" that became synonymous with the second wave of feminism. Ref?
Third-wave feminism started in the mid 1990s, emerging as a reaction to perceived disappointments of the second wave, and also as a reaction to the backlash against action and movements made by the second wave. Third-wave feminism tries to challenge or shun what it considers the second wave's essentialist determinations of femininity, which (as per them) over-emphasize the experiences of upper middle-class white