Modern feminist political activists commonly campaign for women's human right to bodily integrity and autonomy on matters such as reproductive rights, including the right to abortion, access to contraception and quality prenatal care); for protection from violence within a domestic partnership; against sexual harassment, street harassment, and rape; for workplace rights, including maternity leave and equal pay; and against all other forms of sex-based discrimination. Many feminists today regard feminism as a grass-roots movement that seeks to cross boundaries based on social class, race, culture and religion. They also argue that an effective feminist movement should address both universal issues, such as rape, incest, and prostitution, and culturally specific issues relevant to the women of the society in question, such as female genital cutting in some parts of Africa and the Middle East and "glass ceiling" practices that impede women's advancement in developed economies. Feminism also explores subjects including patriarchy, stereotyping, sexual objectification and oppression.
The History of Feminism is the history of the Feminist movement, as well as its origins.[neutrality disputed] The Feminist movement emerged around the late 19th century,[citation needed] with the beginnings of the first wave of feminism. Feminism, as a whole, has been divided into three 'waves', with each seen as dealing with different aspects of the same issues. The first wave refers to the feminism movement of the 19th through early 20th centuries, which dealt mainly with the Suffrage movement. It was an outgrowth of the anti-slavery and abolitionist movements, in which women fighting for the rights of Blacks in the United States realized that they themselves lacked some of the rights they were fighting for for others.[citation needed][neutrality disputed] The second wave (1960s-1980s) dealt with the inequality of laws, as well as unoffical inqualities, and was sparked by the publication of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique. It concluded with the failure of the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Third wave of Feminism (1990s-current), is a continuation of the Second Wave, but is a response to the perceived failures of the Second-wave.
Limiting the history of Feminism to the history of the modern Feminist Movement has been criticised by some authors as ignoring women's opposition to patriarchy over the course of thousands of years. For example, Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women, put forth ideals we now recognize as feminist, as an outgrowth of the englightement values expoused in the late 18th, early 19th centuries.
Although, some find the use of the term, feminist prior to its coinage (sometime around 1880) "ahistoric", while others prefer to see "feminism" as a self-conscious and systematic ideology beginning in the late eighteenth century.
Feminist history refers to the re-reading and re-interpretation of history from a female perspective. It is not the same as the history of feminism, which outlines the origins and evolution of the feminist movement. It also differs from women's history, which focuses on the role of women in historical events.
The goal of feminist history is to explore and illuminate the female viewpoint of history through rediscovery of female writers, artists, philosophers, etc, in order to recover and demonstrate the significance of women's voices and choices in the past. Two particular problems which feminist history attempts to address are the exclusion of women from the historical and philosophical tradition, and the negative characterization of women or the feminine in it; however, feminist history is not solely concerned with issues of gender per se, but rather with the reinterpretation of history in a more holistic and balanced manner.
"If we take feminism to be that cast of mind that insists that the differences and inequalities between the sexes are the result of historical processes and are not blindly "natural," we can understand why feminist history has always had a dual mission — on the one hand to recover the lives, experiences, and mentalities of women from the condescension and obscurity in which they have been so unnaturally placed, and on the other to reexamine and rewrite the entire historical narrative to reveal the construction and workings of gender." From Pedersen, Susan. "The Future of Feminist History"