Feminist history in the United Kingdom
Feminist history in the United Kingdom covers part of the
Feminism movement in the
UK from
1800 to the present day.
The advent of the
reformist age during the
19th century meant that those invisible minorities or marginalised majorities were to find a catalyst and a microcosm in such new tendencies of reform.
Robert Owen, while asking for "social reorganisation", was laying down the bases of a new reformational background. One of those movements that took advantage of such new spirit was the
feminist movement. Activists such as
Emmeline Pankhurst were trying to show that British women needed more than a domestic servility. The stereotype of the
Victorian gentle lady became unacceptable and even intolerable.
World War I helped to advance the feminist cause, as women were much needed by the UK heavy industry at the time, and those working women became accustomed to their new-found economic independence.
*Melanie Phillips;
The Ascent of Woman - A History of the Suffragette Movement and the ideas behind it, Time Warner Book Group London, 2003, ISBN 0-349-11660-1
*Martin Pugh,
Women and the women's movement in Britain, 1914 -1999 , Basingstoke [u.a.] : St. Martin's Press [u.a.], 2000
Barbara Bodichon founder of the women's right movement in England.
Mary Wollstonecraft
