Maxine Molyneux - Feminist activism across the generations

Maxine Molyneux, Professor of Sociology at University College London, explains feminist activism from a historical perspective.

About Maxine Molyneux

"I am Professor of Sociology at the Institute of the Americas, University College London, I am deeply committed to human rights.

I’ve written books on Latin American feminism, women’s movements, state socialism and poverty and social justice."

First wave feminism

The first thing to say is that feminism emerged in the period of the Enlightenment as a movement – a radical movement – for equality, rights and justice. In the 18th century, there were significant debates about rights: the American Revolution, the French Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, for example, as well as debates about the emancipation of slaves and the emancipation of women.

The 18th century was the beginning of the discussion about women’s place in society. Women were beginning to demand their own rights and, indeed, when the Declaration of the Rights of Man was issued during the French Revolution political activist Olympe de Gouges produced the Declaration of the Rights of Woman – for her pains, alas, because she was a monarchist, she ended up on the guillotine. Nevertheless, the issue of women’s rights was taken up and continued to be a major concern throughout the 19th century, when the very first feminist movements were beginning to put together sets of demands for women to be recognised as full human beings with full rights. The period of the 19th century was, therefore, the inception of feminism and the birth of those first women’s movements making demands for suffrage, for the right to have an education and the right to enter the professions.

The 20th century saw the continuation of that first movement known as the first wave of feminism. There was the very first attempt to create international feminist organisations pushing for rights, equality, citizenship and justice, ideas that travelled to most parts of the world: women in Japan calling themselves The Blue Stockings, demanding the right to education, and Latin American women demanding suffrage. In the more radical sectors of feminism, like the anarchist movement, women were demanding sexual justice; that is, not to be treated as victims of the double standard, not to be controlled by men, not to have their sexuality undermined and denigrated. The gains of that first wave were slow at first but gradually spread through society and through to other parts of the world.

Key Points

• Feminism has generally been seen to have pursued three prongs of struggle: social justice, rights and political representation.
• First wave feminism: In the early 20th century, there was the very first attempt to create international feminist organisations.
• Second wave: The 1970s saw a new wave of feminism which was far more radical: feminists began to question the whole cultural set-up in their societies and to demand cultural change, as well as structural change.
• Third wave: This is known as a period of institutionalisation, where there was more activity to bring about legal change and to advance a programme of women’s rights in the fullest form.
• Fourth wave: There was a new vitality brought into feminism in the 2010s by a generation of young women activists.