Transnational feminism
In the "Oxford Handbook of Transnational Feminist Movements", Valentine Moghadam says that "women have worked together across borders since at least the mid-1800s. (55)" What is now called first wave feminism started in the early twentieth century in the West with a focus on women's suffrage. 
During World War II, the United States government gave women jobs because the war had caused a national shortage of labor. After the war ended, Irene Tinker says (oxford transnational), these jobs were taken away but women were no longer satisfied going back to their previous gender roles. Starting in the 1960s in the United States, second wave feminism emerged, defined by women's organization around "equal right to education, employment, and equal pay for equal work, and on sexual and reproductive rights."
First-wave feminism
Feminist issues and gender roles were discussed in media and literature during the 18th century by people such as Margareta Momma, Catharina Ahlgren, Anna Maria Rückerschöld and Hedvig Charlotta Nordenflycht, but it created no movement of any kind. The first person to hold public speeches and agitate in favor of feminism was Sophie Sager in 1848, and the first organization created to deal with a women's issue was "Svenska lärarinnors pensionsförening" (Society for Retired Female Teachers) by Josefina Deland in 1855.