Stafford Library: Women's Studies Resource Guide: First Wave

Issues of the First Wave

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Women's Health
During the past 20 years or so, significant data have appeared on the differences between men and women regarding the way in which they become ill and die. This has given rise to consideration of the existence of possible gender bias in matters related to health, a bias that may have facilitated the so-called “invisibility” of women in areas of health research, professional training, and care. However, there is a differential profile of women with regard to health (both physical and mental).
Women's Suffrage: Topic Page
The right of women to vote; Throughout the latter part of the 19th cent. the issue of women's voting rights was an important phase of feminism.

Achievements of the First Wave

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Married Women's Property Acts (United States)
From From Suffrage to the Senate: America's Political Women
Until the passage of married women’s property acts in the mid–nineteenth century, marriage essentially resulted in a woman’s civil death, which included the denial of her right to own property. The acts, however, fueled the debate on women's rights.
Married Women's Property Acts (Great Britian)
From Dictionary of British History
Two statutes that granted basic property rights to married women and were thus important landmarks in the women's movement.
The 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Nineteenth Amendment guarantees women the right to vote.

Leaders and Activists of the First Wave

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Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906): Topic Page
Undoubtedly one of the most forceful pioneers of women’s suffrage in the United States, Anthony never gave up hope of winning.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902): Topic Page
Women’s rights leader and feminist pioneer; She was drawn to the abolitionist, temperance, and women’s rights movements through visits to the home of her cousin, the reformer Gerrit Smith.
Lucy Stone (1818-1893): Topic Page
Abolitionist and women’s rights activist; In 1850 she was a leader in calling a women’s rights convention at Worcester, MA, and her speech there both won over Susan B Anthony to the cause and inspired John Stuart Mill to write ‘The Enfranchisement of Woman’.
Frances Willard (1839-1898): Topic Page
Undoubtedly the dominating presence in the WCTU, Willard devoted her considerable energies to women’s education and suffrage and protective measures for working women.
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941): Topic Page
Her essay A Room of One's Own (1929) has become a feminist classic.

First Wave

First Wave Feminism From Feminist Philosophies A-Z

A term that came into use in the late 1960s feminist movement (the second wave) to refer to activist women in the UK and US during the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who were seeking the right for women to vote, to higher education, to birth control, to employment rights, to married women’s property rights and to equitable marriage laws.