The Woman Movement

"The Woman Movement" is a book on feminist activism by Ellen Key. The Woman's Movement includes the demand for the vote, but it looks upon the vote merely as a reasonable condition for attaining far wider and more fundamental ends. In this book, the author believes that the Movement will progress less by an increased aptitude to claim rights than by increased power of self-development, that it is not by what they can seize, but by what they are, that women, or for the matter of that men, finally count. The author regards the task of women as constructive rather than destructive; they are the architects of the future of humanity, and she holds that this is a task that can only be carried out side by side with men, not because man's work and woman's work is, or should be, identical, but because each supplement and aids the other, and whatever gives greater strength and freedom to one sex equally fortifies and liberates the other sex." The author Ellen Key (1849-1926), was a Swedish difference feminist writer who wrote on a wide range of topics including family life, ethics, and education, as well as a prominent member of the Modern Breakthrough movement. She was a women's rights activist and an early proponent of a child-centered approach to education and parenting. She is particularly noted for her book on education, «The Century of the Child» (1900), which was translated into English.