Feminism
Feminism,reform movement aiming at the social, educational, and political equality of women with men, which arose during the late 18th century. The first great document of feminism was the Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), by the English author Mary Wollstonecraft. American women, including Abigail Adams and Mercy Otis Warren, were just as early in agitating that the Constitution specifically state the rights of women. Later prominent leaders in America included Emma Willard, who wrote a Plan for Improving Female Education (1819); Margaret Fuller, who wrote Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845); and Harriet Farley, who edited the Lowell Offering. As an early result of feminist agitation, Oberlin College was the first institution of higher learning to grant degrees to women (1837). After the convention led by Elizabeth Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and others (1848), the movement became a predominantly political one for woman...
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