History
The term was originally used in Britain in the 1920s to distinguish New feminists from traditional mainstream suffragist feminism. These women, also referred to as welfare feminists, were particularly concerned with motherhood, like their opposite numbers in Germany at the time, Helene Stöcker and her Bund für Mutterschutz. New feminists campaigned strongly in favour of such measures as family allowances paid directly to mothers. They were also largely supportive of protective legislation in industry. A major proponent of this was Eleanor Rathbone of the suffragist-successor society, the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship.
New feminists were opposed mainly by young women, especially those in the Six Point Group, particularly Winifred Holtby, Vera Brittain, and Dorothy Evans, who saw this as a retrograde step towards the separate spheres ideology of the 19th century. They were particularly opposed to protective legislation, which they saw as being in practice restrictive legislation, which kept women out of better-paid jobs on the pretext of health and welfare considerations.
Read more about this topic: New Feminism
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“... in America ... children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“Tell me of the height of the mountains of the moon, or of the diameter of space, and I may believe you, but of the secret history of the Almighty, and I shall pronounce thee mad.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“America is, therefore the land of the future, where, in the ages that lie before us, the burden of the World’s history shall reveal itself. It is a land of desire for all those who are weary of the historical lumber-room of Old Europe.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)