Feminism is the doctrine that advocates equal rights for women. Feminism is the idea that the Bill of Rights and the constitution should apply equally to women, men, transgender, and transsexual persons. Feminism promotes inclusion, individual identity, and acceptance. Feminism has been around for centuries. Feminist promotes "the dignity and equality of women in the midst of a very male dominated society." (LeGates 494).
In Europe, before the nineteenth century, women were considered to be inferior and all the power was given to men. In spite of all of this oppression against women feminist protested against their secondary status. In many societies women who were not married and were living without any male authority were considered to be a major social problem. Many German and French towns did not allow married women to reside in their towns. The vindication of Rights of Women written by Mary Wollstonecraft in 1972 said, "the first major work of feminist theory in history challenged the gender bias of liberalism, which insisted on considering females rather as women than human creatures." (LeGates 501) One of the first women rights further were the women who participated in the movement to abolish slavery. In 1848 a women's rights convention, held by women and men, drafted a Declaration of Sentiments that was modeled in the .
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Declaration of Independence. Throughout the world in the nineteenth century feminist were shifting from arguments on equal rights based on similarities of the sexes to the differences between men and women. Feminism took a long time to develop because it challenged assumptions about social order. The nineteenth and eighteenth century created new developments in feminism including arguments from equality and arguments from differences. Women argued for respect for themselves. They also got better treatment and this is mainly because of the efforts of early feminist.
