The Feminist Movement In The 19th Century

Feminism has been a unique liberation movement that only just appeared within the past 200 years. Feminist movements in the nineteenth century placed a particular focus on gaining basic rights for women, were more focused in the Western world, and offered less diversity in their expressions as compared to feminist movements in the second half of the twentieth century. However, feminist movements of both eras were fundamentally based in the idea of female rights, had a basis on white and middle class women, were international in scope, and also were provocative of backlash from orthodox institutions.

In the 19th century, feminism was focused on gaining basic rights for women. These rights were often political in scope, such as women’s suffrage or the right for women to participate in the workplace. One example of a feminist movement in the 19th century was the Seneca Falls Convention, where arguably for the first time women addressed the …show more content…
This was a unique process, as these countries placed less focus on equal rights for women, and more focus on direct action in women’s liberation movements. Women of developing countries even accused wealthier women of the Global North of being akin to “colonial missionaries” in their goals to control the agenda of feminist movements in the Global South. This division within the world of feminism was new to the 20th century, and very different from the global unity that feminism had generated in the 19th century. However, women of different socioeconomic classes also became involved in feminism in addition to the diffusion of the political ideology into developing countries. African American women in the US were even unique in their expression of feminism in that they stuck with their families to a greater extent than white women, seeing them as “safety nets” against gender