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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

Ephron was dispatched by Esquire to cover the burgeoning Women's Movement, and to profile its major players, including Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan.

From Salon ● Jun. 14, 2021

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

She and the book’s other author, Kirsten Grimstad, 75, were both professors who saw the compendium as a way to draw attention to the Women’s Movement.

From New York Times ● Jun. 3, 2020

Its chief features will be: Articles dealing with the Women's Movement in England and other countries.

From The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

I think the fact that I’ve become a symbol for the women’s movement is somewhat accidental.

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

The women's movement has a history of standing up to regimes in Indonesia, playing a crucial role in past waves of protest.

From BBC ● Sep. 3, 2025

Many in the women’s movement were appalled by Stanton’s stand.

From "Votes for Women!" by Winifred Conkling

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Related Words

• feminist movement

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