In the 1850s and 1860s women began to organise on a significant scale tochallenge their subordinate position in European society. By 1900 there were organised women’s movements in most states, including all of western Europe, the Nordic countries, Russia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Between 1906 and 1919, women in most European countries obtained the vote. This women’s struggle is known as first-wave feminism. It involved much more than merely suffrage. It initiated fundamental change to the way in which women perceived themselves and were perceived by men, and to the life destinies to which women aspired and were, by the beginning of the twentieth century, accomplishing. This was the beginning of women’s liberation.