Women-led uprisings are mass protests that are initiated by women as an act of resistance or rebellion in defiance of an established government. A protest is a statement or action taken part to express disapproval of or object an authority, most commonly led in order to influence public opinion or government policy. They range from village food riots against imposed taxes to protests that initiated the Russian Revolution.
Some women-led mass protests deliberately set out to emphasise the gender (or gender role) of the organisers and participants: for example, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo emphasised their common role as mothers by marching in white headscarves to symbolise the diapers of their lost children. In other settings, women may strip naked in order to draw attention to their cause, or to shame or intimidate those whom they are protesting.
Early history.
The creation of the first human societies.
Studies of contemporary hunter-gatherers show that their strong sense of moral community is maintained by autonomous individuals who constantly resist any form of personal domination. In fact, many hunter-gatherers are so egalitarian and communistic that even a non-Marxist anthropologist like Christopher Boehm argues that hunter-gatherer societies – the first human societies – must have originated in uprisings against dominant males.
Chris Knight, and other anthropologists influenced by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, have theorised that these uprisings were led by women looking for collective support to ease their childcare burdens. They have used a wide range of evidence from anthropology, primatology, mythic narratives, evolutionary biology and archaeology. Some Marxists have dismissed these ideas. However, although the idea of women-led uprisings creating the first societies is controversial, a number of highly respected anthropologists have taken the thesis seriously. (Mary Douglas, Robin Dunbar, David Lewis-Williams, Caroline Humphrey, Marilyn Strathern, Clive Gamble, Keith Hart and Chris Stringer have all made favourable comments about Knight's work.)
Boudica.
Boudica was a queen of the British Celtic Iceni tribe who led an uprising against the conquering forces of the Roman Empire in AD 60 or 61. She died shortly after its failure and was said to have poisoned herself. She is considered a British folk hero.
17th and 18th centuries.
Food riots.
E. P. Thompson's classic article "The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the 18th Century" emphasised women's role in many food riots. He argued that the rioters insisted on the idea of a moral community that was obliged to feed them and their families. As one contemporary commentator wrote: "Women are more disposed to be mutinous ... [and] in all public tumults they are foremost in violence and ferocity."
John Bohstedt later argued that Thompson had exaggerated women's role in food riots. Thompson responded by forcefully rejecting Bohstedt's criticism. While it is not possible to know the exact level of women's involvement in 18th century food riots, it appears that, at the very least, women led or initiated a significant minority of such riots and they participated in many more. Women participated more fully in food riots than they had in earlier anti-impressment riots of 1747, in which they defended community interest and enforced community morality. These riots of revolution and resistance opened up opportunities for women to take political action as social and economic influencers, and not just as a republican's wife or a mother. He indicates that women's new assertiveness had something to do with the weakening of the patriarchal control of women as feudalism declined and market relations expanded.
Men and women participated in food riots in Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany (where contemporary reports claimed that women initiated many riots). Dutch tax riots in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were more numerous and often more violent, with participants of both lower and lower-middle classes, whereas food riots drew only lower-class participants. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, at least 26 riots and 50 demonstrations involved women, with 10 being chiefly under their control. Women did the cooking and purchased foodstuffs for their families; therefore, they were the first parties to be confronted with scarcities of food and high prices. In doing so, women generally controlled much of the household finances. Another reason for their participation is due to the fact that food riots typically started in market places near shops and mills, which is where women gathered the most. 
One of the most prominent tax riots in 1616 has even gone on record as "the Women's Revolt of Delft". Women also conducted nearly a third of food riots during the American Revolution despite the fact that they were excluded from the vote, unqualified to serve as jurors at courts and law, and were essentially politically disabled by their dependent status. It made a difference that Americans knew that women figured prominently in food riots in England and Europe, and it made a difference that ideas of equity, neighborly dealing, and charity informed American women's daily lives in the colonial period. Roughly 100 women marched a "Female Riot" and took to the streets in July 1777 insisting on their right to enforce equitable exchange.
19th century.
French Revolution.
Women were especially prominent in food riots in French marketplaces (although men dominated those in the countryside). The most momentous French food riot was the Women's March on Versailles. This occurred in October 1789, when the market women of Paris began calling the men 'cowards' and declaring: 'We will take over!' The women proceeded to march to Versailles with soldiers following them. The crowd then forced the King to return to Paris where, three years later, women were again major participants in the demonstrations that led to the abolition of the monarchy. A police inspector said in 1793: "It is mainly the women who are stirred up, women who in turn communicate all their frenzy to the men, heating them up with their seditious propositions and stimulating the most violent effervescence."
Meanwhile, women in the countryside initiated 'counter-revolutionary' protests against the new government's policies of the repression of the Church and the conscription of male peasants into the army.
During the French Revolution, women led the fight for religion. Their fight would lead the way for the feminization of religions. Women felt that they were responsible for maintaining a spiritual balance within their family. They fought harder than their male counterparts, sometimes invoking violent and illegal actions to get their voices heard. If women were arrested, the men in their lives would downplay the damage they could do, and women were seen as more hysterical and vulnerable as a whole, so society generally thought little of their violent and illegal actions. But if a woman refused or avoided taking part in petitions or marches, she would be shamed until guilted into taking part.
Women during the French Revolution also fought for their own rights. Aristocratic women were not as likely to partake in the activities that could ruin their family and/or their chance of inheriting the family fortune (or what she would receive), so they were reluctant to participate. Working class women also faced this dilemma, but because they were already suppressed, the good of what they could achieve outweighed the loss of family pride and/or fortune. Louis XVI had allowed all people who paid taxes to vote, but since women could not pay taxes, they could not vote. While the Third Estate made rules, women would present their opinions through pamphlets and petitions to let the Third Estate know what they wanted. "Pétition des femmes du Tiers-Etat au Roi" stated that women wanted education to go beyond French and Latin for church, more jobs to be available to women, and to raise the maximum pay of 5–6 sous. "Motion en Faveur du Sexe" and "Discours préliminaire de la pauvre Javotte" focused on dowries and marriage. In the working class, finding a job was hard enough for men, harder for women, and saving enough money to get married was almost impossible. Women did not want to have to pay a dowry to get married; this applied only in the Third Estate. "The Rights of Woman" by Olympe de Gouges was a complete pamphlet that stated all the rights that women should have. It was copied almost word for word from the "Declaration of the Rights of Man", but applied to women. Another booklet, "Griefs et plaintes des femmes mal mariées", criticised marriage laws that entailed women submitting to men, and demanded the legalization of divorce. 
Within the bourgeoisie, Madame Etta Palm van Aelder was a leading figure in fighting for women's rights. She demanded the equal right to education, political freedom, divorce and the legal freedom of women of age 21 and over. While political freedom would not be gained until after the Revolution, all of van Aelder's other demands would be met in some way. In August 1792, women aged 21 and above were given legal freedom from their parents. In September 1792, women were granted the right to divorce and the Law of 1794 eased the divorce process. Educational programs were advanced and allowed women to be trained for careers, but they still did not obtain equality. Female teachers were paid less than males and primary school classes were divided by gender. After the advancements and improvements in the educational system, women were not much better off than before.
R. B. Rose argues that despite the efforts of women during the Revolution, little changed. The Revolution was a revolution for the men, and a place of chaos for the women. The French Revolutionary Constitution of 1791 allowed women to be labeled as citizens, but nothing else. They did not have voting rights or the ability to run for office. The Napoleonic Code of 1804 suppressed wives into submission to their husbands, reversing all equality demands made during the Revolution. Women still could not own land because they could not legally sign any contract, putting the land into the hands of her closest male relative.
Franco-Prussian War.
During the Franco-Prussian War of 1871, women were prominent in preventing the army from moving their cannons from Paris, an event which helped spark the Paris Commune.
20th century.
British women's suffrage movement.
During the early twentieth century, women's protests for the right to vote became particularly militant in Britain. Many of the core organisers of mass protests were women. Strategies used by protestors included mass demonstrations, arson, widespread window breaking and attempts to storm both Parliament and Buckingham Palace. After World War I broke out in 1914, the mainstream suffragette movement suspended its protests in order to focus on the war effort.
World War I.
During World War I, women led large numbers of food riots in Germany, Russia, Italy and elsewhere. Women workers also led the way in strike-waves in Berlin and Paris. The German authorities reported that union leaders were doing 'everything possible to prevent such disturbances and strikes over food provisions, but ... it is the countless female workers who constantly agitate and stir things up.' Women's prominence in these struggles helped delegitimize the war, and the regimes that were fighting it, paving the way for the huge strike-waves and revolutions at the end of the war.
Women participated in and organised several food riots that broke out in North America during the early twentieth century. Women also led food riots in Japan and non-belligerent Spain. Women's protests against high food prices spread across Spain in both 1913 and 1918. In Barcelona, in 1918, women used the slogan: 'In the name of humanity, all women take to the streets!' They organised repeated demonstrations and attacked shops, warehouses, government offices and music halls. Women also staged food riots during the Spanish Civil War.
Russian Revolution.
Karl Marx had recognized that "great social revolutions are impossible without the feminine ferment" and, in 1917, it was Petrograd's (Saint Petersburg) female workers who spread the idea of a general strike on 8 March, International Women's Day. On that day, hundreds of women threw stones and snowballs at factory windows demanding for bread. Economic depression in 1917 particularly devastated the working-class women because prices of daily necessities increased tremendously, but their low wages did not compensate for the increase in prices of goods. After a long and tiring day of labor, women had to line up for hours just to get a loaf of bread. Sometimes after wasting hours waiting in line, the bread would run out. The protests were led by thousand of female workers and inspired male factory workers to join