Feminism: 1. The qualities of females (1851). 2. [After French feminisme] Advocacy of the rights of women (based on the theory of equality of the sexes) (1895). Womanism: Advocacy of or enthusiasm for the rights, achievements, etc. of women (1863). Feminist: adj. Of or pertaining to feminism, or to women. (1894) - Oxford English Dictionary

"Feminism has as its goal to give every woman the opportunity of becoming the best that her natural faculties make her capable of." - Millicent Garrett Fawcett, 1878

"... not till race, color, sex and condition are seen as accidents, and not the substance of life; not till the universal title of humanity to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is conceded to be inalienable to all; not till then is woman's lesson taught and woman's cause won-not the white women's nor the black women's, nor the red women's, but the cause of every man and of every woman who has writhed silently under a mighty wrong." - Anna Julia Cooper, 1893

"I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute." - Rebecca West, The Clarion, 1913

"Mother, what is a Feminist?"
"A Feminist, my daughter, any woman now who cares to think about her own affairs as men don't think she oughter." - Alice Duer Miller, 1915

"One type involves those who think women will only be free when they equal men in all their vices. This is called feminism... But companeras, do we really want to smoke cigarettes? [The other type is] women being respected as human beings, who can solve problems and participate in everything-culture, art, literature, politics, trade-unionism-a liberation that means our opinion is respected at home and outside the home." - Domitila Barrios de la Chungara, 1975

"We are trying to live as if we were an experiment conducted by the future." - Marge Piercy, "Rough Times" 1.1-3, 1976

"Feminism means finally that we renounce our obedience to the fathers and recognize that the world they have described is not the whole world.... Feminism implies that we recognize fully the inadequacy for us, the distortion, of male-created ideologies, and that we proceed to think, and act, out of that recognition." - Adrienne Rich, 1976

"I am a feminist, and what that means to me is much the same as the meaning of the fact that I am Black: it means that I must undertake to love myself and to respect myself as though my very life depends upon self-love and self-respect." - June Jordan, 1978

"The reason racism is a feminist issue is easily explained by the inherent definition of feminism. Feminism is the political theory and practice to free all women: women of color, working-class women, poor women, physically challenged women, lesbians, old women-as well as white economically privileged heterosexual women. Anything less than this is not feminism, but merely female self-aggrandizement." - Barbara Smith, 1979

"Third World feminism is about feeding people in all their hungers." - Cherrie Moraga, 1983
"The beginning point at both conferences must be that everything is a woman's issue. That means racism in a woman's issue, just as is anti-Semitism, Palestinian homelessness, rural development, ecology, the persecution of lesbians, and the exploitative practices of global corporations." - Charlotte Bunch, UN Conference in Nairobi, 1985

Feminism -1: the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes; 2: organized activity on behalf of women's rights and interests - Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, 1988

If you say, "I'm for equal pay," that's a reform. But if you say, "I'm a feminist," that's ...a transformation of society. - Gloria Steinem, 1992

"You are a feminist if you believe:
1. Women matter as much as men do
2. Women have the right to determine their lives
3. Women's experiences matter
4. Women have the right to tell the truth about their experiences
5. Women deserve more of whatever it is they are not getting enough of because they are women: respect, self-respect, education, safety, health, representation, money." - Naomi Wolf, Fire With Fire, 1993

A feminist is "one who holds the view that women are less valued than men in societies that categories men and women into differing cultural or economic spheres. A feminist also insists that these qualities are not fixed or determined, but that women themselves can change the social, economic and political order through collective action." - Sarah Gamble, Critical Dictionary of Feminism and Postfeminism, 2000