Early History of Feminism

Aug 3, 2011
Rupert Taylor

Mary Wollstonecraft’s Writing Sparked the Feminist Movement. - Public Domain

For three hundred years, women have sought better treatment and recognition for who they are rather being defined by a male-dominated society.

Since ancient times, women have been pushed into a secondary role. The Greek philosopher Aristotle, who lived 2,300 years ago, gave his opinion that, “The relation of male to female is naturally that of superior to inferior, of the ruling to the ruled. This general principle must similarly hold good of all human beings generally.”

While some women rose to positions of great power (Cleopatra, Elizabeth I of England, and Catherine the Great of Russia spring to mind), Aristotle’s sexist view pretty much dominated for two thousand years.

The Birth of Feminism

Then along came Jeremy Bentham. The liberal English philosopher wrote in 1781 that women existed in a condition of virtual slavery. Miriam Williford (Journal of the History of Ideas, 1975) notes that Bentham “argued for almost total emancipation – for a political freedom that would allow women to vote and to participate as equals in the legislative and executive branches of government.”

He also said women should have the right to seek a divorce and that the double standard in sexual matters was outmoded and in need of banishment.

A few years later a French nobleman with the magnificent name of Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet agreed with Bentham.

In 1790 he published a pamphlet entitled On the Admission of Women to the Rights of Citizenship, in which he argued that the Declaration of the Rights of Man, passed the year before by the French National Assembly, should apply equally to both sexes.

The First Feminist

Back in England, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-97) was writing about the need for the emancipation of women. In 1792, she produced a book-length essay entitled Vindication of the Rights of Women. She argued that women were not naturally inferior to men and that it was simply lack of an education that held them back from displaying complete equality.

At the time she wrote, women in Britain had no rights to own property or enter into legal contracts. As far as education was concerned, females were all but banned from learning anything of an academic nature. Women were seen as delicate creatures that, in Wollstonecraft’s view, were put on a pedestal that was inside a prison.

In her 2006 book Feminism: A Very Short Introduction, Professor Margaret Walters states that Wollstonecraft’s book was the cornerstone of feminism. Not everybody agreed.

Her radical views did not go down well with the establishment. The writer Horace Walpole summed up the prevailing judgement that Mary Wollstonecraft was “a hyena in petticoats.”

Support for Mary Wollstonecraft

Another Brit, this time a man, took up Wollstonecraft’s ideas and pushed them a little further along. John Stuart Mill wrote The Subjection of Women in 1869 in which he contended, as Jeremy Bentham had, that women were essentially slaves who should be freed and accorded equality with men, including the right to vote.

Meanwhile, in the United States, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her friend Susan Anthony began campaigning for equal rights for women. Their work in the second half of the 19th century sprang from the abolition of slavery movement.

The Slow Path to Voting

The campaign for equality for women started in the late 18th century. It was a century before New Zealand became the first country to grant the vote to women in 1893.

Other major nations took their time: Canada (1919), United States (1920), and the United Kingdom (1928). Women in many developed countries had to wait longer: France (1944), Argentina (1947), Japan (1947), Switzerland (1971).

Saudi Arabia remains the only country that has not extended the vote to women.

Sources

“Justice: A Reader.” Michael J. Sandel, Oxford University Press, USA, 2007.
“The History of Feminism.” Edward N. Zalta (editor) Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
“Bentham on the Rights of Women.” Miriam Williford, Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 36, No. 1, Jan. - Mar., 1975.
“Feminism: A Very Short Introduction.” Margaret Walters, Oxford University Press, USA, 2006.