First-Wave Feminism and the Suffrage Movement

This lesson examines first-wave feminism — the earliest organised feminist movement, which focused primarily on securing legal and political rights for women, especially the right to vote (suffrage). First-wave feminism laid the foundations for all subsequent feminist thought and activism.

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Context

First-wave feminism emerged in the mid-19th century, in a context where women were severely disadvantaged:

• Women could not vote in national elections.
• Married women could not own property in their own name (under the common law doctrine of coverture, a wife's legal identity was absorbed into her husband's).
• Women had limited access to education — universities were largely closed to them.
• Women were excluded from most professions (law, medicine, the clergy, politics).
• Divorce was extremely difficult for women to obtain, and custody of children typically went to the father.
• Domestic violence and marital rape were largely tolerated.

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Key Thinker: Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797)

Although she wrote before the formal first wave, Wollstonecraft is considered the intellectual founder of liberal feminism. Her key arguments: