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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?
It looks like you were right to question definitions here, as many other users were confused. I'm going to use my inexperience with this community as an excuse for not properly explaining myself.
When I say feminism in this post, I refer to the social and political movement, starting in the late 1800s, that tasked itself with obtaining equal rights for women. I am not referring to modern, so called '3rd wave' feminism, as we have yet to see the consequences of that stage of the movement.
Also, I think the original post failed to address the scope I was looking at. I am not confused as to why an individual would want to support feminism, but more so why the entire movement was so successful at completely replacing the social conventions of the time, and with such incredible speed.
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