ABSTRACT
The primary concern of this chapter is with the emergence of feminism as a social movement and particularly with the aims and strategy of equal rights and socialist feminism, the two early strands of feminism which continue to dominate much contemporary feminist thought and action and remain problematic even for those who reject them. The role of education in the mobilisation of women and the formation of feminist ideas is a major consideration here and in the following chapter, where two historical cases of deviation from the gender pattern are used to illustrate the questions raised by the discussion of feminist ideas. In both cases, the fact that women reached political elites in unusual numbers did not suffice for them to embark on a radical programme of change, or even, in the long term, to sustain their own advance. Yet feminist ideas were an active political force in the background which brought these women to positions of personal prominence. The question addressed theoretically here, and empirically in the settings of Finland and Russia, is whether it was the nature of their feminism that failed these women.
