This presentation focuses on political reasons and achievements of first wave feminism.

1. First Wave Feminism
Ahmet Ensar Köprülü

2. Question
What are the political reasons behind the emergence of the first wave feminism?
What are the achievements of the feminist groups in this period?

3. Outline
● Brief history
○ The Feminine Ideal
○ The Woman Movement
○ First Wave Feminism
● Political reasons
○ Woman Suffrage
○ Reproductive Rights
● Achievements
● Conclusion

4. The Feminine Ideal
● Reaction to political inequities.
● Fights against the woman stereotype in “The Angel in the House” and
Victorian image of the ideal woman.
● “...she obviously ‘didn’t know what life was all about’”(Friedan, 2013, p.4)

5. The Woman Movement
● Collection of political movements, social movements and ideologies that
defend the political, the economic, the personal and the social rights of
women.
● Aim at achieving and establishing equality between women and men.
● For reforms at reproductive rights, domestic violence, women’s suffrage,
sexual harassment, etc.
● Divided into three waves.

6. First Wave Feminism
● Involved a period of feminist activity during the 19th and early 20th centuries,
especially in Europe and in the United States.
● Key Concerns:
○ Women’s suffrage
○ The right the education
○ Better working conditions
○ Marriage and property laws
○ Reproductive rights

7. Thesis Statement
Although first wave of feminism has emerged in different parts of the world on
different dates due to different reasons of pressure that women exposed.
However, women's suffrage and reproductive rights were two common issue in
every 19th and 20th century feminist movements.

8. Woman Suffrage
● Is right of women to vote in elections.
● Women seen as inferior physically and mentally
● Contribution of women to economy and the war
● “But the vote was much more than simply a reward for war work; the point
was that women's participation in the war helped to dispel the fears that
surrounded women's entry into the public arena” (Hume, 2016, p. 281)

9. Reproductive Rights
● “...enable individuals to make free and informed choices in all spheres of life,
free from discrimination based on gender" and "Sexual and reproductive
security, including freedom from sexual violence and coercion, and the right
to privacy," (UNFPA, 2015, n.p.)
● “One of the basic problems for women, as has been seen, is reconciling the
reproductive role and productive work” (Beauvior, 2015, p.168)
● “...she wins control of her body” (Beauvior, 2015, p.171)

10. Achievements
● Right to vote for women.
● The opening of higher education for women.
● Reform of the girls’ secondary-school system, including participation in formal
national examinations: the widening of access to the professions especially
medicine.
● Married women's property rights recognized.
● Improvements in divorced and separated women’s child custody rights.

11. Conclusion
Women were taken away from their rights and silenced. However, women united
under organizations and protested governments and social norms due to the fact
that knew that they were much more than what society imposed on them. As a
result of protest and movements, women gained reproductive and voting rights.
Therefore, they become politically and socially stronger.

12. References
Beauvoir, S. D., Borde, C., & Malovany-Chevallier, S. (2015). The second sex.
London: Vintage Books.
Friedan, B. (2013). The feminine mystique. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
Hume, L. (2016). The National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies
1897–1914. Routledge. p. 281. ISBN 978-1-317-21326-0.
UNFPA. (2007). Supporting the Constellation of Reproductive Rights. Retrieved
From https://www.unfpa.org/resources/supporting-constellation-reproductive-rights

13. Any Question?