First-Wave Feminism: Timeline and Criticisms

The term “first-wave feminism” refers to the feminist movement of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, specifically when the women’s suffrage movement took place in the US. During this time, women organized and advocated for social and constitutional equal rights to white men, including the right to vote, the right to education, the right to own property, and the right to be legally recognized as independent subjects from their husbands rather than their property.

This first wave of feminism preceded later feminist social movements (or “waves”) that broadened their scope to address race, class, sexuality, and gender identity. The first wave denotes the period in which figureheads advocated for women's rights and worked toward basic legal reform for single and married women. At times, this movement addressed working women's issues and earning a higher education, but most of the efforts concentrated on obtaining the right to vote.

Second-wave feminism eventually brought about meaningful discourse about abortion, race, equal pay, birth control, and reproductive rights. Third-wave feminism eventually brought to light issues of heteronormativity and body positivity.

The first wave of feminism coincided and often overlapped with the abolitionist movement in the US when activists lobbied for the abolition of slavery. This groundswell of marginalized individuals fighting for equal constitutional rights sometimes supported collaborative activism. However, some conservative suffragettes adopted a segregationist stance that prioritized the voting rights of white women over Black men and Black women. Here is a brief overview of first-wave feminism in the US, which lasted from around 1840 to right after the First World War.

• 1840: Abolitionists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott attended the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London and were not allowed to sit in the room because they were women. Instead, they watched the demonstration from a separate gallery where they could only listen and not participate. This was a pivotal moment for Stanton, who was strongly influenced by Mary Wollstonecraft’s first feminist treatise, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792).
• 1848: Stanton organized the first Women’s Rights Convention in the US in 1848. Hundreds of attendees convened at the Seneca Falls Convention to discuss the various political, social, and religious issues that affected women in the US. It took six sessions over two days to determine the most crucial issues the Women’s Rights Movement faced, leading to the Declaration of Sentiments. This document reiterated the need for equality and outlined sixteen other grievances regarding suffrage, government representation, marriage and divorce laws, and employment. One hundred people signed the document, including sixty-eight women and thirty-two men; among them was Frederick Douglass, the famous Black abolitionist and scholar.
• 1851: Prominent Black American author and abolitionist Sojourner Truth delivered her famous “Ain’t I A Woman” speech at the Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio. Truth’s heartfelt speech helped open many eyes to the importance of improving the particularly unfair plight of Black American women belonging to two marked categories. However, conversations around suffrage for white women and Black suffrage mostly remained segregated.
• 1866: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony formed the American Equal Rights Association (AERA) during the Eleventh National Woman’s Rights Convention, which focused on women’s voting rights. A year later, Truth urged the women to acknowledge how granting voting rights to Black men and not Black women would do little for the latter’s freedoms.
• 1867: Sojourner Truth spoke at AERA in 1867, emphasizing the importance of pushing for Black women’s rights as the momentum for civil rights had begun. However, women of color’s issues would not be addressed until the second wave of feminism.
• 1869: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and fellow suffragist Susan B. Anthony left AERA to form a new organization, the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), which was largely opposed to the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment (an amendment that guaranteed the right to vote for all people regardless of race or color but excluded gender). The remaining conservative feminists of AERA, including Julia Ward Howe and Lucy Stone, formed their own organization—the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA).
• 1872: Police arrested Anthony and dozens of other women for illegally voting in the presidential election.
• 1890: The NWSA and AWSA merged to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). Their main goal was to get states to pass enough amendments toward gender equality to force Congress to create a federal amendment guaranteeing nationwide equality. NAWSA even attempted to recruit college-educated and privileged members to help spread the word, but the plan was unsuccessful.
• 1914: Unhappy with the “state-by-state” method of reformation by fellow first-wave feminists, Alice Paul split from the NAWSA, forming the National Women’s Party. Over the next few years, Paul organized picketing and protests, primarily outside the White House in Washington DC.
• 1915: The American Medical Association began admitting women members.
• 1916: Margaret Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in direct defiance of a New York State law banning contraception distribution. In that same year, Jeannette Rankin became the first woman elected to the House of Representatives.
• 1918: It wasn’t until 1918 that the president, Woodrow Wilson, announced his support for suffrage, leading to the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1919. Historians largely view this as the end of the first wave of feminism.

One of the biggest criticisms of first-wave feminism is that it primarily focused on the plight of white women. Many early feminists involved in this movement were middle class and white and focused demonstrations and discourse on women as a “one size fits all” oppressed category. This focus ignored the plight of Black women—some of whom had been enslaved—and Asian women—who were barred from obtaining citizenship and voting rights in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Even after white women in New York attained the right to vote in 1917, many Chinese women did not.

Other criticism of the first wave focuses on its racial bias and encouragement of segregationism. However, the movement largely ignored the racial bias many women of color faced in addition to their gender. Some women who ran the movement shirked true inclusivity and segregated their demonstrations for fear of alienating conservative white women who could join the movement and strengthen their cause.

Some suffragettes didn’t support the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment, which would have given Black men the right to vote before them. The actions and progress of Black women like Maria Stewart and Frances E. W. Harper were also largely ignored and left out of the narrative.

Feminism is an intersectional movement with a focus on issues that touch every part of our lives, including reproductive rights, workplace culture, and caregiving. Gain access to exclusive videos on feminism with the MasterClass Annual Membership and get a crash course from leaders Gloria Steinem, Amanda Nguyen, Tina Tchen, and adrienne maree brown.