History of feminism
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott met in 1840 while en route to London where they were shunned as women by the male leadership of the first World's Anti-Slavery Convention. In 1848, Mott and Stanton held a woman's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, where a declaration of independence for women was drafted. Lucy Stone helped to organize the first National Women's Rights Convention in 1850, a much larger event at which Sojourner Truth, Abby Kelley Foster, and others spoke sparked Susan B. Anthony to take up the cause of women's rights. In December 1851, Sojourner Truth contributed to the feminist movement when she spoke at the Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio. She delivered her powerful “Ain’t I a Woman” speech in an effort to promote women’s rights by demonstrating their ability to accomplish tasks that have been traditionally associated with men. Barbara Leigh Smith met with Mott in 1858, strengthening the link between the transatlantic feminist movements.
Feminism in Chile
With the strong influence of Catholicism in Chile, some of the first feminist movements ironically came from socially conservative women. In 1912, upper class women began to advocate for working class women in a way that was favorable to conservative groups of the time. The first female organizations that came to be in Chile started around 1915, but unlike many other countries and their groups, these women were most likely to be in the upper middle class. As such, they were largely able to put together these groups where exploration of the interest in feminism came to be by shedding particular light on the issues that middle to upper-class feminists found to be the most important. One of the earliest examples of this in Chilean history occurred on June 17, 1915, when a young university student, and later a diplomat and suffragist, named Amanda Labarca decided to start a group called the "Círculo de Lectura", where she was able to promote Chilean culture towards women. With this, she was able to bring together positivity and change within the women in her community because she strived to ensure that all women could be given a chance to have their voices heard, through education, regardless of their affiliations and social status. Early feminism in Chile also took notes on the international feminist mobilizations, while catering to Chile's specific culture. For example, feminists such as Amanda Labarca promoted a domestic form of feminism which was sensitive to the socially and politically conservative governmental powers of the time. Generally speaking, this was what was seen as the beginning of first-wave feminism amongst Chilean women.