A Historical Overview of the Feminist Movements in Belgium and Romania

The emergence of the feminist movements in Belgium and Romania is related to women’s struggle for access and rights to education, for girls and the poor, at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Over the years, their claims expanded and encompassed civil and economic equality and political rights. To this end, feminist activists founded organizations, engaged with public authorities, and collaborated with parties and trade unions. They organized and mobilized at international level in a concerted effort to obtain political rights, for peace and against fascism. The framing of their demands was crosscut by ideological differences and class divisions that reflected the wealth of their perspectives and the heterogeneity of the movements, but also the tensions and challenges to cooperation and alliances. After gaining the right to vote and to be elected, the idea of the necessity of autonomy of the movement emerged, in the context of preparing for elections, with some activists proposing the creation of a feminist party to defend women’s rights and which materialized in Belgium but was not successful. Debates about the feminist movement’s autonomy nourished an ideal of a movement, defending women’s rights above all else and beyond political and ideological cleavages.