The suffragette movement was the first historical case of women organizing specifically as women.
Evidence
It was the first time in history that women took on a cause as women: this is what gave particular interest to the suffragettes in England and America. For fifteen years, they carried out a policy recalling in some respects a Gandhi-like attitude: refusing violence, they invented more or less ingenious symbolic actions. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 279
Categorization
- DEFINE: Clarifies the analytic distinction between women mobilizing within universalist movements versus explicitly as a class of women.
- XREF: Connects to the reader’s broader knowledge of nonviolent civil disobedience — Gandhi, MLK, the suffragettes’ symbolic-action repertoire predates them. — connects to: The suffragettes’ actions provoked legal changes in women’s voting rights. — Neil MacGregor, A History of the World in 100 Objects, 1448; Renaissance individualism briefly allowed women to wield military and political power.; The mainstream women’s movement was deliberately structured around white middle-class interests. — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 435 (+1 more)
Broader Connections
- The suffragettes’ actions provoked legal changes in women’s voting rights.
#expands(0.85) — Neil MacGregor, A History of the World in 100 Objects, 1448 - Renaissance individualism briefly allowed women to wield military and political power.
#qualifies(0.75) - Worker and bourgeois women pursued fundamentally different routes to liberation
#complicates(0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 278 - The mainstream women’s movement was deliberately structured around white middle-class interests.
#complicates(0.70) — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 435