12 - First-Wave Feminism and Professional Status

Summary

Writers and scholars define the period of first-wave feminism in the Western world in various ways. For some the first ‘wave’ grew out of the demands for equality from women during the French Revolution, for others it had its roots in the Women’s Rights Convention in New York, United States, in 1848. However, it is generally agreed that the period 1880–1920 saw the height of feminist activity from a wide variety of women in Britain, Europe, and the United States.¹

Women organized together to demand rights to employment and education, and most agreed that the right to suffrage, being able to vote and take part in political power, was fundamentally important. By 1920, certain women in Canada, Germany, Russia, the UK, and the United States, had been granted the right to vote. But full suffrage was not granted to women in the UK until 1928, in France not until 1944, and Italy not until 1945, for example.²