Today we’re starting our history review as we look back through the different ‘waves’ or generations of feminism, starting with what’s called the ‘first wave’ of feminism, which focused on women’s suffrage and political agency.
Let me start off by positioning this within the context of western history, and largely within the history of the USA and the UK. I am sadly not informed enough in global feminist histories and this is somewhere I know I need to grow.
The classical beginning of what we consider as ‘feminism’ started in late 19th and early 20th centuries, when women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony (in the USA) and Millicent Fawcett and Emmaline Pankhurst (in the UK) agitated for women’s political agency via suffrage rights. In both the USA and the UK, there were different approaches or ‘camps’ of suffragists - some peaceful, and other who felt that direct, disruptive action was the only way to enact change. A few feminists, like the American Alice Paul, traveled between the USA and the UK, getting involved in the fight for women’s suffrage and political equality on both sides of the Atlantic.
The main political principle these early feminists used was highlighting the ways in which men and women should be treated as the same in society - at least, how white men and women should be treated with parity, particularly property-owning white men and women. This approach, identified as a ‘sameness' strategy by philosophers like Sally Haslanger and Elizabeth Hackett, continues to be a powerful way of advocating for certain types of legal and political rights for women - for instance, while lobbying for equal pay at work.
Universal suffrage for white citizens was gained in the USA in 1920, with the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. Men and women over the age of 21 were able to vote in the UK in 1928; property-holding women over 30 were granted the right to vote earlier. The feminists of that time would not have classed themselves as a ‘wave’ of feminism; this was a classification that the later generation of feminists used to differentiate themselves from their predecessors. While this first ‘wave’ of feminism focused primarily on women’s access to legal rights, future ‘waves’ of feminism looked at women’s experiences of social and cultural power as well as access to political spheres.
The first wave of feminism was largely by and for white women; although some white feminists collaborated with black women and lobbied for the abolition of slavery, most white feminists felt that including black women in their work would hold back their progress. Some white feminists, like the Quaker Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, worked closely with Black women to advance abolitionist causes as well as supporting women’s right to vote.
There were black feminists during this period who made important changes: most famously, of course, was Sojourner Truth, but there were many women working for change. Anna Julia Cooper, who wrote A Voice From the South in 1892, which was one of the earliest books which promoted advanced education for black women in America. Sarah Douglass, along with her mother Grace, started the radical Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society, where black and white women worked together for the total abolition of slavery and immediate equality of black and white people, men and women, throughout American society. Ida B Wells, a journalist who led speaking tours in Britain exposing the horrors of lynching, founded the National Association of Colored Women’s Club despite experiencing racist denouncements from conservative white suffragettes.
Ida B Wells. Image via https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/ida-b-wells-barnett
Next week we’ll look at the range of second wave feminisms in depth. For this week, have a read of Sojourner Truth’s famous speech, which you can find linked here. If you’re after a film night, have a look at Suffragette and Iron Jawed Angels.
There is an excellent timeline of largely American achievements won by first wave feminists here at The Gender Press along with some spectacular posters discouraging women’s involvement in the suffrage movement.
Image via https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/04/world/europe/uk-centennial-women-voting-rights.html