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→First Wave Around the World
==First Wave Around the World==
While there has been much focus on feminists in the United States, feminists movements had also developed in various periods, most notably after the 18th century, in many countries. Southern Australia was among the first places women could vote, where in 1895 the right to vote was achieved by women there. Catherine Spence was a prominent figure who had campaigned for the vote.
In Denmark, they had already achieved not only voting rights but equal rights laws that protected a woman's access to education, work and marital rights during the 1920s. In effect, they had begun to move to topics that only were more fully addressed by second wave feminists in other countries by the 1960s.
In Iran, at the time of the Seneca Falls convention, in 1848, a religious movement, called Babism, represented a view that God wanted women to be equal to men and had been among the earliest religious movements in the Islamic regions of the Middle East to advocate the removal of veils and greater freedom for women. The movement helped eventually start Bahaism, a religious idea that sought unity among many religions and also advocated greater roles and equality for women. Although these movements have largely been suppressed, it helped to launch or influence feminist ideas in non-Western regions. In Russia and China, the rise of socialist and eventually Communism helped to create greater feminist equality. Although Women did gain the right to vote and be considered equal to men in Soviet society, voting was restricted to the Communist party. Women, however, gained rights in other areas that Western women did not have access to for decades. This included generous maternity leave, free childcare, abortion rights, and generally had greater access to higher education. However, by the later half of the 20th century, women did not make as much gains in holding political power or even high-level job roles.
In the UK, women gained the right to vote in 1918, although their rights were not equal until 1928. The suffragettes were often notorious for their militancy in trying to achieve their goals. However, society had also increasingly saw that it was natural to have women be given the right to vote. The UK also had other restrictive laws, such as prohibition from wealthy women from controlling their property, that were not fully removed until the late 1890s. In the 1850s, divorce became an issue that was moved to the civil courts rather than requiring the Church to be responsible for.
==Later Significance==
