What early feminist movement tells us about today's gender inequality

Indian Express

30-05-2025

— Mohammad Asim Siddiqui
Recently, the Supreme Court set aside the judgment declining maternity leave to a school teacher, and said she was entitled to receive maternity benefits despite having two children.
But other structural inequalities faced by women remain very much in place. According to The Time Use Survey 2024 (January-December), while men spend 132 minutes more than women on employment and related activities, women spend much more time on unpaid domestic services – 289 minutes daily compared to 88 minutes by men.
In this context, how far have we come in addressing the structural inequalities? Can legal interventions correct such entrenched disparities, or a deeper shift in societal attitude is required? These questions, which constitute the core of feminist thought, may be better understood by revisiting the emergence of the feminist movement.
The term feminism existed as early as the mid-nineteenth century, though at the time it simply meant 'having the qualities of a female'. The term became widely known in the 1890s when anti-suffragists began using it negatively to refer to women's rights activists. Political parties and other organisations soon adopted the term
Feminism's history has been marked by many ruptures. It was only during the second wave of feminism beginning in the 1960s in the US when feminism began to take shape as a concerted and continuous movement. It advanced on various fronts simultaneously, with activists working at the grassroots level while legal and political scholars were sharpening their theoretical tools.
Cut to the present, often referred to as the fourth wave of feminism, the movement has branched into diverse approaches, frameworks and methodologies, and has continued the work of what feminist scholar bell hooks described as 'a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression'.
The concrete beginning of the First Wave of Feminism, dating from 1830 to 1920 and generally identified with the suffragette movement, can be traced to the Women's Rights Convention held in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848. Attended by more than 300 men and women, the Convention passed many resolutions stressing the equality of the sexes and issued the Declaration of Sentiments – the movement's manifesto.
One of the main organisers of the event was Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a pioneering figure in the first wave who continued to champion women's causes all through the 19th century. The Declaration of Sentiments marked the formal beginning of the suffrage movement. In the same year, women groups across England, France, Germany and Italy joined workers and other marginalised groups to demand equality, giving the movement an international character.
Around this time, many feminist journals also started publishing news and commentaries on women's activities. Women attacked many oppressive laws that denied them the right to make contracts, bequeath property, have rights over their children or write wills. Common demands during this phase included opportunities in education, property rights and suffrage.
The rise of capitalism and democracy in the late 18th and 19th centuries awakened a new consciousness about individual rights. Yet the change in the nature of the economy, work and wages brought about by capitalism largely benefited men, leaving women disadvantaged and increasingly dependent on men.
Similarly, early theories of individual rights also placed men at the centre. The feminist movement addressed such issues, asserting the value of women's economic labour and their rights. Estelle B. Freedman in her book No Turning Back: The History of Feminism and the Future of Women (2002) argues that 'feminist politics originated where capitalism, industrial growth, democratic theory, and socialist critiques converged, as they did in Europe and North America after 1800. Women and their male allies began to agitate for equal educational, economic, and political opportunities, a struggle that continues to the present.'
During the first wave of feminism, Marxism and liberalism were the two important intellectual frameworks that were deployed to talk about women's exploitation and to address the issue of inequality. While Marxism envisioned women's emancipation through the overthrow of capitalism, liberalism, rooted in the principle of rationalism and belief in just governance, emphasised equality before the law.
The liberal position on women's equality was articulated forcefully by thinkers like Mary Wollstonecraft and John Stuart Mill. In her most famous work A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects (1792), Wollstonecraft, drawing on insights from enlightenment ideals of liberty, equal opportunity and rationalism, questioned the divine rights of husbands and challenged the notion of women's inferiority.
Sharply disagreeing with Rousseau, who held a contemptuous view of women's education in Emile, Wollstonecraft advocated education for both men and women. She urged women to focus on cultivating their minds rather than prioritising beauty and fashion. Wollstonecraft wrote:
'Contending for the rights of women, my main argument is built upon this simple principle, that if she be not prepared by education to become the companion of man, she will stop the progress of knowledge and virtue; for truth must be common to all, or it will be inefficacious with respect to its influence on general practice.
'And how can women be expected to cooperate unless she knows why she ought to be virtuous? Unless freedom strengthens her reason till she comprehends her duty, and sees in what manner is connected with her real good.'
Exhorting women to develop their own potential, she said that 'I do not wish them to have power over men, but over themselves.' It was partly due to her influence that education was the earliest demand of women in the first wave.
John Stuart Mill's The Subjection of Women (1869), an important liberal-feminist text that influenced the future development of feminism, makes a strong case for the emancipation of women and for female suffrage in Britain. Stressing the principle of equality, Mill categorically stated:
'The principle which regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes – the legal subordination of one sex by the other – is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement; and that it ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality, admitting no power or privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other.'
The women's movement in the US was linked with the abolition and temperance (abstinence from alcohol) movements. However, many women found themselves excluded from the rank of the men-led abolitionist groups, forcing them to form women's rights groups. One reason behind the organisation of the Seneca Fall Convention was the exclusion of five US female delegates from the World Slavery Convention in London in 1840.
With alcohol consumption reaching unprecedented levels in the nineteenth century, women were the main victims of men's alcohol abuse. The formation of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in 1874, and later the emergence of its many branches, accelerated women's efforts to protest alcohol abuse and its association with immorality.
In a pioneering study of women's speeches and writings, Man Cannot Speak for Her: A Critical Study of Early Feminist Rhetoric, Vol. 1(1989), Karlyn Kohrs Campbell notes that 'temperance was an acceptable outlet for the reformist energies of women during the last decades of the nineteenth century'.
Traditionally, 'good' women could participate in the temperance movement without facing any disapproval. 'Although the WCTU accepted traditional concepts of womanhood', Campbell continues, 'it came to argue that woman's distinctive influence should be extended outside the home via the vote. Consequently, woman suffrage became acceptable to more conservative women (and men), who had rejected it before, when presented as a means for woman to protect her domestic sphere from abuses related to alcohol.'
The civil war in the US adversely affected the women's movement as the focus of the nation gradually turned to patriotism and national interests, with women's demands becoming secondary. Women's groups had fully supported the cause of the Union and the abolition of slavery, expecting in return support for their rights.
However, their hopes were dashed when Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which dealt with voting rights and was ratified in 1868, introduced the word male into the US Constitution for the first time. This provision granted voting rights to all American males above 21 years. Women challenged their exclusion in the Supreme Court, which rejected their demand for suffrage in 1875.
An important development in the suffrage movement was the merger of two rival women organisations – the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) and the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). The merger led to the formation of a more influential organisation – the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) on February 18, 1890. Though its leaders often differed sharply over methods and policies, the new organisation made serious efforts for woman's right to vote.
The entry of fiery activist Alice Paul into the NAWSA in 1910 took the concerns of the organisation from state suffrage to national Constitutional amendment. Her conflict with the policies of NAWSA led her to form the National Woman's Party. These efforts culminated in the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution in 1920, granting women the right to vote.
What were the key demands of the First Wave of Feminism? How did early feminist movements navigate societal expectations of womanhood and morality?
What role did Mary Wollstonecraft and John Stuart Mill play in shaping early feminist thought?
Do you think the Supreme Court's ruling on maternity leave signal a genuine shift in the broader approach to gender justice?
In a country where women spend over three times as much time as men on unpaid domestic work, what policy interventions can ensure equitable sharing of household responsibilities?
(Mohammad Asim Siddiqui is a Professor in the Department of English at Aligarh Muslim University.)
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