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• Women's Movement
  Women's Movement

  noun

  a grass-roots movement of women concerned with women's liberation See Women's Liberation
• women's movement
  women's movement

  A movement to secure legal, economic, and social equality for women, also called the feminist movement. It has its roots in the nineteenth-century women's movement, which sought, among other things, to secure property rights and suffrage for women. The modern feminist movement, often said to have been galvanized by the publication of Betty Friedan's book The Feminine Mystique, began in the 1960s and advocates equal pay for equal work, improved day care arrangements, and preservation of abortion (see also abortion) rights. (See Equal Rights Amendment, feminism (see also feminism), and Gloria Steinem.)

Women's Movement

British  

noun

1. a grass-roots movement of women concerned with women's liberation See Women's Liberation

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women's movement Cultural  

1. A movement to secure legal, economic, and social equality for women, also called the feminist movement. It has its roots in the nineteenth-century women's movement, which sought, among other things, to secure property rights and suffrage for women. The modern feminist movement, often said to have been galvanized by the publication of Betty Friedan's book The Feminine Mystique, began in the 1960s and advocates equal pay for equal work, improved day care arrangements, and preservation of abortion (see also abortion) rights. (See Equal Rights Amendment, feminism (see also feminism), and Gloria Steinem.)

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

Women's Movement women's movement

As first lady, she founded the 31st December Women's Movement to empower women and teach them how to earn money to develop their communities.

From BBC ● Oct. 23, 2025

Women got to know of our work and invited me to attend a Women’s Movement training, where they equipped us with skills to address gender-based violence.

From New York Times ● Mar. 7, 2024

As a journalist and a writer, and living through the Women’s Movement during the ‘70s, I was immediately drawn to the story line of “Mrs. America.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 7, 2020

Ana Quirós, part of the Autonomous Women’s Movement, who has been campaigning for the release of the political prisoners, was injured in the first demonstration on 18 April in Managua.

From The Guardian ● Oct. 3, 2018

But it was not until after 1900 that the Women's Movement took possession of her.

From Elsie Inglis The Woman with the Torch by Lena Ashwell

Sure, she was, for decades, the name and face most synonymous with the women’s movement, and with radical—she insisted on qualifying it—feminism.

From Slate ● Sep. 3, 2026

There Steinem wrote one of the first mainstream media dispatches from the women’s movement, covering a 1969 abortion speak-out in Greenwich Village, where woman after woman shared stories of terminating pregnancies.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 3, 2026

Many years later, activist Angela Davis credited Saar, and “The Liberation of Aunt Jemima,” with starting the Black women’s movement.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 28, 2026

Decades later, activist Angela Davis credited “The Liberation of Aunt Jemima” with spurring the Black women’s movement.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 27, 2026

Despite setbacks, the women’s movement was gaining momentum.

From "Votes for Women!" by Winifred Conkling

Related Words

• feminist movement