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.
African feminism
Some argue that African women are the first feminists, were already deeply engaged at the 1985 Womens' Conference, and have long been recognizing each other's contributions. Others feel African feminism became necessary in part due to white Western feminism's exclusion of the experiences of the black woman and the continental African woman. White Western feminisms does not take into account the particular issues black women face at the intersection of both their blackness and their womanhood. Currently, white feminism often classifies African women as "women of color," which groups and thereby represses the African woman's historical trajectory and specific experience. Hazel Carby in "White Women Listen! Black Feminism and the Boundaries of Sisterhood" notes why white feminism is considered the normative experience of all women. She writes, "History has constructed our sexuality and our femininity as deviating from those qualities with which white women, as the prize of the Western world, have been endowed." However, white feminism cannot continue to erase Africa or African women from feminist theory or feminist advocacy, because as the Mother Continent of humanity, the narratives and experiences of Africa's women will always be relevant.