Social movement that seeks equal rights for women.
Widespread concern for women's rights dates from the Enlightenment ; its first important expression was A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). The 1848 Seneca Falls Convention , convened by Elizabeth Cady Stanton , Lucretia Mott , and others, called for full legal equality with men, including full educational opportunity and equal compensation; thereafter the woman suffrage movement began to gather momentum. From America the movement spread to Europe. American women gained the right to vote by constitutional amendment in 1920, but their participation in the workplace remained limited, and prevailing notions tended to confine women to the home. Milestones in the rise of modern feminism included {{link=Beauvoir, Simone Lucie-Ernestine-Marie-Bertrand de">Simone de Beauvoir 's The Second Sex (1949) and Betty Friedan 's The Feminine Mystique (1963) and the founding in 1966 of the National Organization for Women . See also Equal Rights Amendment ; women's liberation movement .