First-wave feminism refers to a period of feminist activity during the 19th and early twentieth century in the United Kingdom, Canada, the Netherlands and the United States. It focused on de jure (officially mandated) inequalities, primarily on gaining women's suffrage (the right to vote).

The term first-wave was coined retroactively in the 1970s. The women's movement then, focusing as much on fighting de facto (unofficial) inequalities as de jure ones, acknowledged its predecessors by calling itself second-wave feminism.

Early 20th century

During the early 20th century, English women achieved civil equality, in theory. World War I saw more women go to work outside the home. In the beginning of the 20th century, women were limited to factory labor and domestic work. Women gained the right to sit in parliament, although it was only slowly that women were actually elected. Women started serving on school boards and local bodies, and numbers kept increasing after the war. This period also saw more women starting to become more educated. In 1910, "women were attending many leading medical schools, and in 1915 the American Medical Association began to admit women members."[4] Bills such as the Women's Emancipation Bill passed which aided the women's movement. Representation of the People Act 1918 had given women the right to vote if they were property holders and older than 29. In 1928, this was extended to all women over 21.[5] The Sex Disqualification (removal) Act 1919 opened professions and the Civil Service to women, and marriage was no longer seen to legally stop women from working outside the home. A Matrimonial Causes Act in 1923 gave women the right to the same grounds for divorce as men. However, the recession which started in the 1920s meant unemployment rose, which women were the first to face. Many women served in the armed forces during the war. In World War II, around 300,000 American women served in the Navy and Army performing jobs such as secretaries, typists and nurses. Many feminist writers and women's rights activists argued that it was not equality to men which they needed but a recognition of what women need to fulfil their potential of their own natures, not only within the aspect of work but society and home life too. Virginia Woolf produced her essay A Room of One's Own based on the ideas of women as writers and characters in fiction. Woolf said that a woman must have money and a room of her own to be able to write.

United States

Woman in the Nineteenth Century by Margaret Fuller has been considered the first major feminist work in the United States and is often compared to Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.[6] Prominent leaders of the feminist movement in the United States include Lucretia Coffin Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, and Susan B. Anthony; Anthony and other activists such as Victoria Woodhull and Matilda Joslyn Gage made attempts to cast votes prior to their legal entitlement to do so, for which many of them faced charges. Other important leaders included several women who dissented against the law in order to have their voices heard,(Sarah and Angelina Grimké), in addition to other activists such as Carrie Chapman Catt, Alice Paul, Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells, Margaret Sanger and Lucy Burns.

First-wave feminism involved a wide range of women, some belonging to conservative Christian groups (such as Frances Willard and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union), others such as Matilda Joslyn Gage of the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) resembling the radicalism of much of second-wave feminism. The majority of first-wave feminists were more moderate and conservative than radical or revolutionary—like the members of the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) they were willing to work within the political system and they understood the clout of joining with sympathetic men in power to promote the cause of suffrage. The limited membership of the NWSA was narrowly focused on gaining a federal amendment for women's suffrage, whereas the AWSA, with ten times as many members, worked to gain suffrage on a state-by-state level as a necessary precursor to federal suffrage. The NWSA had broad goals, hoping to achieve a more equal social role for women, but the AWSA was aware of the divisive nature of many of those goals and instead chose to focus solely on suffrage. The NWSA was known for having more publicly aggressive tactics (such as picketing and hunger strikes) whereas the AWSA used more traditional strategies like lobbying, delivering speeches, applying political pressure and gathering signatures for petitions.

The first wave of feminists, in contrast to the second wave, focused very little on the subjects of abortion, birth control, and overall reproductive rights of women. Though she never married, Anthony published her views about marriage, holding that a woman should be allowed to refuse sex with her husband; the American woman had no legal recourse at that time against rape by her husband.

In 1860, New York passed a revised Married Women's Property Act which gave women shared ownership of their children, allowing them to have a say in their children's wills, wages, and granting them the right to inherit property. Further advances and setbacks were experienced in New York and other states, but with each new win the feminists were able to use it as an example to apply more leverage on unyielding legislative bodies. The end of the first wave is often linked with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (1920), granting women the right to vote. This was the major victory of the movement, which also included reforms in higher education, in the workplace and professions, and in health care.

Many white women excluded black women from their organizations and denied them the right to participate in events because they feared that the racist attitudes of Southern voters would affect their support of the women's movement. One notable instance of black exclusion was at a Washington parade in 1913, when activist Alice Paul did not allow the black feminist Ida Wells-Barnett to march with the other white women; instead, Paul told her that she could march at the back of the procession with the other black women.

References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-wave_feminism