Documenting First Wave Feminisms

This book is the second of a two-volume anthology of primary source documents on feminism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Unique in its extensive treatment of the first-wave feminist movement in Canada, it highlights distinct elements of its origins and evolution. The book is organized into thematic rubrics that address key issues, debates, and struggles within the first wave in Canada, as well as international influences and Canadian engagement in transnational networks and initiatives. Documents by Indigenous, Anglophone, Francophone, and immigrant female activists demonstrate the richness and complexity of Canadian feminism during this period. Together with its first volume, Documenting First Wave Feminisms reveals a more nuanced picture, attentive to nationalism and transnationalism, of the first wave than has previously been understood.

Contemporary feminists are used to juggling many different identities at once, balancing affiliations based on race, nation, class, and sexuality. First-wave feminists also negotiated--or failed to negotiate--similar tensions in their international organizing. Using primary documents dating from the abolitionist movement to the Second World War, Maureen Moynagh and Nancy Forestell investigate the tensions inherent in organizing early transnational feminist movements. Documenting First Wave Feminisms: Volume 1 provides a historical framework to bring together voices of women both canonical and less well known, from Mary Wollstonecraft to Mabel Dove, who were active in feminist movements in all corners of the world. Suffrage, imperialism, citizenship, sexuality, and moral reform are shown to be key issues in a variety of exchanges across North America, Europe, the global south, and the Pan-Pacific region. This source book is as nuanced as first-wave feminism itself and will prove a valuable resource for studying women's rights in an increasingly globalized world.

This issue makes a stimulating contribution to the growing store of knowledge about the feminist movement which immediately preceded current ones. What emerges is the similarity of purpose between past and present movements; the task of seeking women's equal participation in the administration and work of the world, and that of liberating women from sexual slavery, and the basic commitment to expose the system of male power. A rich and varied collection of articles, this issue reflects both the achievements of current feminist historical research and the obstacles which stand in the way of the full development of such research.

Contemporary feminists are used to juggling many different identities at once, balancing affiliations based on race, nation, class, and sexuality. First-wave feminists also negotiated—or failed to negotiate—similar tensions in their international organizing. Using primary documents dating from the abolitionist movement to the Second World War, Maureen Moynagh and Nancy Forestell investigate the tensions inherent in organizing early transnational feminist movements. Documenting First Wave Feminisms: Volume 1 provides a historical framework to bring together voices of women both canonical and less well known, from Mary Wollstonecraft to Mabel Dove, who were active in feminist movements in all corners of the world. Suffrage, imperialism, citizenship, sexuality, and moral reform are shown to be key issues in a variety of exchanges across North America, Europe, the global south, and the Pan-Pacific region. This source book is as nuanced as first-wave feminism itself and will prove a valuable resource for studying women's rights in an increasingly globalized world.

This book is a collection of 150 documents from feminist organizations and gatherings in over 50 countries over the course of three centuries. The manifestos are shown to contain feminist theory and recommend actions for change, and also to expand our very conceptions of feminist thought and activism. Covering issues from political participation, education, religion and work to reproduction, violence, racism and environmentalism, the manifestos challenge definitions of gender and feminist movements.