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Feminism is a hot topic, a user before mentioned his thoughts on it's origin, and that got me thinking. What is the social driver behind feminism?
Personally, I see it as a response to modern medicine and work safety standards, and the resulting rapidly booming population. Without historic mortality levels, it is no longer necessary for women to devote their lives to maintaining the population. With women free to do as they please, society suddenly finds itself with a lot of free hands that could be working, and so there is a push to remove the social systems that forbid women from traditional labor.
What puzzles me, is through what force does society implement change like this? It's not like we suffered the woes of overpopulation, and responded with feminist cultural change. This seems almost pre-emptive. But the arguments behind the feminist movement (I think) were based around freedom and equality. Was there a secret utilitarian agenda? Did things just coincidentally line up? Does society naturally drift towards freedom when the roadblocks are removed? Am I simply stupid and uneducated? I don't know enough to figure it out, but I feel like it's at least an interesting question. Thoughts?
To me the simplest answer seems to be the correct one. Large numbers of women, and men who sympathized, decided, on the heels of previous emancipatory movements (directed towards commoners or slaves and others) decided that women should be extended the rights and privileges formerly restricted to men. Once you've declared all men are created equal and have inalienable rights, etc. it's not a big leap to all people are created equal and have the same inalienable rights etc. They pushed for these changes in whatever ways they could, including, as others have noted, the patronage of wealthy supporters. Unlike some other commenters I see no reason to believe it was some sort of ploy to splinter the family or create a pliant voting bloc. Unless there is ample reason to believe otherwise, the simplest answer would be that wealthy supporters gave money to the cause because they believed in it.
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