Feminism: Yesterday, Today, Future
By Sharon White

As long as women had subordinated they resisted that subordination, thus feminism existed at all times in a sense.

Sometimes the resistance has been collective and conscious. Despite the continuity of women's resistance, however, only within the last two or three hundred years has a visible and widespread feminist movement emerged that has attempted to struggle in an organized way against women's special oppression.

The first wave of feminism refers to the first concerted movement working for the reform of women's social and legal inequalities in the nineteenth century. Although individual feminists such as Mary Wollstonecraft had already argued against the injustices suffered by women, it was not until the 1850's that something like an organized feminist movement evolved in Britain. Its headquarters were at Langham Place in London, where a group of middle-class women, led by Barbara Bodichon and Bessie Rayner Parkes, met to discuss topical issues and publish the English Woman's Journal (1858-64). The key concerns of First Wave Feminists were education, employment, the marriage laws, and the plight of intelligent middle-class single women. They were not primarily concerned with the problems of working-class women, nor did they necessarily see themselves as feminists in the modern sense.

In some retrospect three basic feminist political strategies developed during the first wave of feminism which emerged during the nineteenth century. These were maternal, equal rights and trade unionist feminists. Maternal feminists were concentrated on suffrage, i.e. voting rights for women. They based their argument on the moral superiority of women because of their child-bearing ability and their natural nurturing ability that made them peace makers, as mothers of the nation etc.