Social feminism
Equity feminism may be liberal, Marxist or socialist, but it demands equal rights for women within the male-defined framework.
[3] Social feminist organizations should therefore exclude men to maintain their distinctive female characteristics.
This philosophy considers that mothering should be used as a model for politics, and women's maternal instincts uniquely qualify them to participate in a "female" sphere.
They were willing to vote for an eight-hour day for factory workers, but baulked at giving the same terms to their maids.
There were two socialist women, Elizabeth Renaud and Louise Saumoneau, who were not willing to simply accept Durand's lead.
[14] The social feminist and conservative Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) led by Frances Willard (1839–98) was not interested in women's suffrage, and perhaps actively opposed, until around 1880.
At that time it came round to the idea that suffrage was the only way to gain the changes in legislation needed to advance temperance.
The ERA was bitterly opposed by the social feminists who saw it as undermining many of gains they had made in the treatment of women workers.
Drinking, smoking, dancing, sexual novelties, daring literature and avant-garde art now filled the vacuum created by the collapse of social feminism.
For example, they felt that state laws that put in place wage floors and hour ceilings benefited women.
[20] In The Ideas of the Woman's Suffrage Movement, 1890–1920 (1965), Aileen S. Kraditor contrasted belief in the natural justice of women having the right to vote, common among suffragists up to the end of the 19th century, with belief in the "expediency" of women having the vote so they could address social issues, more common in the early 20th century.
[21] However, Kraditor saw a gradual shift in emphasis from "justice" to "expediency" in the rationales for women's suffrage rather than a conflict between the two positions.
[20] Activists such as Mary Ritter Beard, Florence Kelley and Maud Younger fall into both categories.
