Feminism involves various movements theories and philosophies which are concerned with the issue of gender difference, that advocate equality for women, and that campaign for women's rights and interests. According to some, the history of feminism can be divided into three waves. The first wave was in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the second was in the 1960s and 1970s and the third extends from the 1990s to the present. Feminist theory emerged from these feminist movements. It manifests through a variety of disciplines such as feminist geography, feminist history and feminist literary criticism.

Feminism has altered predominant perspectives in a wide range of areas within Western society, ranging from culture to law. Feminist activists have campaigned for women's legal rights (rights of contract, property rights, voting rights); for rights to bodily integrity and autonomy, for abortion rights, and for reproductive rights (including access to contraception and quality prenatal care); for protection from domestic violence, sexual harassment and rape; for workplace rights, including maternity leave and equal pay; and against other forms of discrimination.

Sourced

• What better way is there to empower women than to make the affirmative choice to give birth to a girl? If the many women who believe in both reproductive choice and gender equality utilized all available technologies to have girls, and only girls, they would likely provide a robust counterbalance to those couples who prefer boys.
  • Jacob M. Appel, ethics professor, Want a Daughter? Try Paying for One, Opposing Views, August 26, 2009.

• It should not prejudice my voice that I'm not born a man, if I say something advantageous to the present situation. For I'm taxed too, and as a toll provide men for the nation.
  • Aristophanes (411 BC), Lysistrata, line 649-651
  • Translation: Jack Lindsay, 1925 (online at Perseus)

• ...I know nothing of man's rights, or woman's rights, human rights are all that I recognise.

• We ask justice, we ask equality, we ask that all civil and political rights that belong to the citizens of the United States be guaranteed to us and our daughters forever.
  • Susan B. Anthony —

• I’ve been described as a tough and noisy woman, a prize fighter, a man-hater, you name it. They call me Battling Bella, Mother Courage, and a Jewish mother with more complaints than Portnoy. There are those who say I’m impatient, impetuous, uppity, rude, profane, brash, and overbearing. Whether I’m any of those things, or all of them, you can decide for yourself. But whatever I am —and this ought to be made very clear—I am a very serious woman.

Attributed

• If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.
  • Abigail Adams — reported in

• Does feminist mean large unpleasant person who'll shout at you or someone who believes women are human beings? To me it's the latter, so I sign up.
  • Margaret Atwood — reported in

• The people who resent me do so because I'm a woman, I'm young, and I'm a Bhutto. Well, the simple answer is, it doesn't matter that I'm a woman, it doesn't matter that I'm young, and it's a matter of pride that I'm a Bhutto.
  • Benazir Bhutto — reported in

• The basic discovery about any people is the discovery of the relationship between its men and its women.
  • Pearl S. Buck — reported in

• Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.
  • Timothy Leary — reported in