User:Leire.aranbarri/sandbox/First Wave of Feminism

Draft of the improvements
The improvements for this article will be contributed by two group members: Iker Reiriz and Elene Okamika.

Tasks' division draft scheme:

1. Historical context


 * French Revolution (1789)
 * Illustration vs. Feminism
 * Rousseau’s ideas against gender equality

2.The polemic illustration


 * Mary Wollstonecraft: Vindication
 * Origins of the book – Related with Rousseau’s Ideal Democratic Society of men
 * Consequences – Suffragist movements

Iker Reiriz:

My contribution is based on placing the historical context of the First Wave of Feminism, explaining the tendency of the Enlightenment and its relation with the feminist movement. I will explain how and why the vindications of women emerged at the time.

Also I will highlight the influence of French Revolution and Rousseau´s political theory which was contradictory in terms of gender.

Elene Okamika:

The improvements that I will be contributing into my selected article, are about the origins and historical context of First Wave of Feminsim. Then, I will contribute more information abot the focus of this event. The illustrated polemic will be my contribution's basis. Accordingly, the two key actors' relationship of the First wave of feminsim, which are Mary Wollstonecraft and Rousseau, is going to be explained in order to understand the emerging illustrated polemic, and the historical social context of the moment.

Draft contribution
Iker Reiriz: Historical context

Feminism has its source in the 18th century, specifically in the Enlightenment, in this cultural and philosophical movement there was a controversy on equality and gender differences. At the time appeared a new critical discourse that used the universal categories of this political philosophy. Enlightenment movement therefore was not feminist on its roots.

The French Revolution(1789) raised legal equality, freedoms and political rights as its central objectives but soon came the great contradiction that marked the struggle of early feminism: freedoms, rights and legal equality that had been the great conquests of the liberal revolutions didn´t affect women. Rousseau's political theory designed the exclusion of women from the field of property and rights. So in the French Revolution the voice of women began to express themselves collectively.

Elene Okamika: Polemic illustration

Mary Wollstonecraft’s most famous work, which is called Vindication, was created on 1792. Its previous feminist work was Poullain de la Barre’s Equality of sexes (1673). This period was so affected by Rousseau’s philosophy, the Illustration. The father of the Illustration defined an ideal democratic society that was based on the equality of men, where women were totally discriminated.

Mary Wollstonecraft based her work on the ideas of Rousseau. Although at first it seems to be contradictory, Wollstonecraft’s idea was to expand Rousseau’s democratic society but based on gender equality. The term feminism was created like a political illustrated ideology at that period. Feminism emerged by the speech about the reform and correction of democracy based on equalitarian conditions. With Wollstonecraft’s work, the illustrated feminist polemic was displayed, and as a result, suffragist movements were stood up.