Notion of feminism

        Today, I've been asked to talk about the notion called “the idea of progress/myths and heroes/ places and forms of power”. Progress can be defined as an improvement, a development, or a change -technical, scientific or social advance which contribute in making the world a better place. I'm going to talk about the woman fight for equality and the heroes of this movement. A hero is a person who is admired for their courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities. It can also be a modern-day hero, a person who has performed a heroic act or simply our own personal hero, our role model. Power the ability to make things happen despite obstacles, resistance, or opposition. This, of course, leads to conflict between those who have power and those who don’t.The struggle to achieve equal rights for women is often thought to have begun, in the English-speaking world, with the publication of Mary Wollstonecraft's “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman “ in 1792. During the 19th century, as male suffrage was gradually extended in many countries, women became increasingly active in the quest for their own suffrage. Then, in the 60', women started to claim equal rights as men. This movement leads to the creation of the notion of feminism. Nowadays, women's conditions have been improved, but there is still progress to make.

I) Women's suffrage: first step

        The demand for the enfranchisement of American women was first seriously formulated at the Seneca Falls Convention (1848). Starting in 1910, some states in the West began to extend the vote to women for the first time in almost 20 years. (Idaho and Utah had given women the right to vote at the end of the 19th century.) World War I slowed the suffragists’ campaign but helped them advance their argument: Women’s work on behalf of the war effort, activists pointed out, proved that they were just as patriotic and deserving of citizenship as men, and on August 26, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was finally ratified.

                II) Equality in the society in the 60'

        In the 60's, a woman was expected to follow one path: to marry in her early 20s, start a family quickly, and devote her life to homemaking. In The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan explores the unhappiness of mid-20thcentury women. This book did get a lot of people to started paying attention to the notion of feminism, the belief that woman should have economic, political, and social equality with men. In order to achieve equality, lots of action were made like a “speak out" in New York City where women could talk about their experiences with then-illegal abortions in 1969. Thanks to this action, in 1973 the Roe v. Wade law legalized abortion in all the United States.

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