Feminist

Feminist

Women's rights have forever been an issue in the political and social aspect of the United States. With the emergence of this national debate in the mid 1800's, a new group of individuals in support of this biased issue began to evolve and stake its claim in the American political scene. As the issue evolved and became more omnipresent, feminist became a word with a negative connotation, often times associated with women who were perceived as trying to pry the American workmen from their place of business in an attempt to gain respect. Feminist, however, is meant to describe a broader definition of women which largely are not even associated with the noun due to its negatively perceived meaning.

The word feminist is defined in Webster's Dictionary as "a person in support of women's rights." This broad definition evolved in the mid-1800's as a result of the work of women's rights leaders such as Susan B. Anthony and the Grimke Sisters advocated women's rights by campaigning for the first time the statement that "men and women were CREATED EQUAL." Revolutionary leaders such as Harriet Beecher Stowe helped to use her skillful abilities at writing in an effort to alleviate women with the burdens of sexism and discrimination. Their efforts, along with the help of thousands of other women followers, helped women to achieve suffrage and force congress to pass nondiscriminatory laws. Although discouraged by men in the period, these women bore images of strength and courage against the presiding society which labeled women as inferior and unable to perform the tasks that men performed. Women around the nation began to support these notions, and for the first time, women began to achieve equal rights with men.

In the 1960's, however, the issue of feminism arose once yet again. Leaders like Gloria Steinem began to advocate that a strong woman was one who "had sex before marriage and a job after." Women were challenged to do what had never been done before: challenge the working class, white collar male employee in an effort to gain control in the corporate landscape. Leaders like Steinem and others toured the nation speaking in front of large, mostly female audiences at institutions like universities where the younger groups of women would be more likely to respond to the message in a positive manner. Religion was scrutinized, and Steinem went so far as to state that the alter of the church resembled