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.
Social history of the United Kingdom (1945–present)
The feminist movement drew inspiration primarily from the United States, and from the experience of left-wing British women experiencing discrimination by male activists. Efforts to form a national movement in the mid-1970s foundered on a bitter split between the (predominantly heterosexual) socialists, and the (predominantly lesbian) radicals. The most visible spokesperson was Germaine Greer, whose "The Female Eunuch" (1970) called on women to rebel against marriage and instead live in heterosexual communes. Paul Addison concludes that," in popular culture, feminism was generally treated as a bit of a joke."