The term ‘feminism’ refers to the sum of social, cultural, and political ideologies and movements which aim at eliminating or minimizing the inequality of sexes and discrimination against women. Originally, the term ‘feminism’ was used to denote ‘qualities of female’. It was in1892 when ‘feminism’ was started to be used for a belief in the right of women to claim social equality. Since then, feminism has come a long way to permeate not only social, cultural and political spheres, but also to become a defining ground for several fields of knowledge like geography, history, literary criticism, and philosophy etc.

The history of feminism can be divided into three main categories of movements, called waves: first-wave (end 19th to early 20th century), second-wave (1960s to 1980s), and third-wave (1990s to present). The roots of feminism, however, are much deeper and reach the medieval times when people started to claim women’s equality with men or, in some cases, superiority over mean. Today, these early pioneers can be regarded as the true originators of the feminist philosophy.

Eleanor of Aquitaine of the 12th century Europe can be regarded as the earliest famous feminist in the history of feminist ideology. Being a powerful woman, the queen consort of both France and England, Eleanor of Aquitaine believed that women were superior to men. Better known than Eleanor of Aquitaine today, among intellectuals, is the famous feminist writer Christine de Pizan (lived from 1364 to 1430), who is regarded as the first professional woman writer of Europe. Christine de Pizan was also a literary critic who actively opposed, in her writings, the prejudice against women at that time. Her writings are full of outspoken condemnations of misogynistic representations of women. Her criticism of the famous medieval poem The Romance of the Rose is regarded today as a work of great merit.

Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, the German occult writer and scientist of the 16th century, can probably be regarded as the first man who became a famous feminist by authoring Declamation on the Nobility and Preeminence of the Female Sex. The book raised the question of why women were excluded from public spheres; answering which, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa explained that the exclusion of women owes to the prejudices of their physically powerful oppressors.

Jane Anger, British author of the 16th century, stands as a famous feminist by her pamphlet Her Protection of Women (1589). Jane’s pamphlet condemned men for seeing women as only good for satisfying the male sexual desire. Along somewhat different lines came the criticism of Dorothea Christiane Erxleben (1715-1762), the first woman physician in Germany, who analyzed the various hindrances, like housekeeping and care giving to family, which kept women from pursuing studies.

Among the long list of famous feminists are such renowned persons as Thomas Paine, Mary Shelley, J.S. Mill, Friedrich Engels, Virginia Woolf, and Oprah Winfrey. However, French philosopher and author Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) remains the unsurpassed champion of women’s rights. Best known for her masterpiece book The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir is now considered as the most famous feminist scholar that ever lived on the earth. In The Second Sex, she gave an in-depth analysis of the social oppression of women. Buried next to Sartre in Paris, de Beauvoir is credited with creating the foundational tract of modern feminism movements.