Equality feminism is a submovement of feminism. It is fundamentally at odds with difference feminism and expresses the crucial similarities between the 'male' and 'female' sexes. Mary Wollstonecraft, in Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) claimed that women should enjoy the same legal and political rights as men on the grounds that they are human beings. Similarly, in The Subjection of Women (1869), John Stuart Mill advocated that society ought to be arranged according to reason and that 'accident of birth' is irrelevant. Equality feminists believe that both men and women, whilst unquestionably biologically and anatomically different, enter the world with the genetic inheritance of a mother and a father and from that respect human nature is androgynous, neutral, and equal.
Difference feminism is a branch of feminism that stresses that men and women are essentially very different beings, instead of past feminisms of equality that stress a fundamental sameness between men and women in some way.
Difference feminisms may have arisen due to issues with legislation - equalityfeminisms may have assured that women have gotten suffrage for one, as well as other rights, but for more important and influential changes (for example, medical related support), the assertion that women are different was necessary to make.
Difference feminism was important in responding to problems resulting to women not being given proper provision for differing needs that they may have; for example biological reasons such as for childbirth, and others.
Feminism is advocacy of the rights of women based on the theory of equality of the sexes.
Liberal feminism does not mean that women should become more like men, but that women should have the same legal rights of citizenship afforded men, that they should have equal access to the existing culture.
If feminism and the women's movement mean advocacy of and enthusiasm for the inalienable human rights and achievements of women, then feminism must strive to redress inequalities in the protection and distribution of those rights.
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