The First Wave of Feminism: A Movement Created by and for Americans

Abstract

This paper seeks to explore how Stanton, Anthony, and their peers’ social and legal activism led to the ratification of the 19th amendment. The first wave of feminism began in New York in 1848 when a group of abolitionist, feminist women met at the Seneca Falls Convention to discuss the social and civil rights of women in the United States. The first wave of feminism was the pursuit of greater liberty for women through suffrage, the right to an education, and the right to paid labor, without which women were treated as second-class citizens dependent on men and circumstance. The first wave authenticated the United States of America’s founding principle of democracy. Stanton and Anthony laid the foundational agenda for the first feminist movement by publishing speeches, articles, and books that served to educate all Americans on the necessity of women’s rights and their equal place in society. Examining first and secondary sources revealed that Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, along with their peers, reconstructed the American identity to encompass women by demanding that Americans recognize the rights of women and their equal place in society through their social and legal activism, which demanded they be given the right to vote, the right to an education, and the right to paid labor.