feminism
feminism, feminist theoryA social movement, combining theory with political practice, which seeks to achieve equality between men and women. Its origins in 18th-century England are associated with Mary Wollstonecraft's plea for the rights of women. At the turn of the 20th century the term referred to suffragettes and other campaigners for votes for women and women's access to education and the professions. After the achievement of the vote (1920 in the United States and 1928 in Britain), active feminism was less in evidence until it burst onto the scene again in the late 1960s across North America and Europe in the wake of the civil rights, student, and anti-imperialist movements. Many key concerns of what became known as ‘second wave feminism’ had been prefigured in Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex (1949), a foundational text which remains a crucial influence on contemporary feminist thought. Her recognition that ‘one is not born, but rather...
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