The history of feminism can be traced back to the 3rd century BC, but it does not have a high peak until the Renaissance arrived, after the French Revolution. One of the leading feminists of this era was Olympe de Gouges, that rewrites the “Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen”, the Declaration Rights created after the Revolution, to include women, and publishes her version of the book in 1791. The following year, the english lady Mary Wollstonecraft writes and publishes her book “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman”, proposing that women and men should be given equal opportunities in education, work, and politics.
Through the years, women have fought for their equality before men... Lucretia Mott, Martha Wright, Mary Ann McClintock, Jane Hunt and Elizabeth Cady Stanton at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848; Stanton with her “Declaration of Sentiments” that guided the Seneca Falls Convention... Even Sojourner Truth, a former slave, fighting not only for her equal rights toward men, but her equal rights towards a white woman.
But what nowadays we consider the ‘first feminist wave’, started in the 20th century with the right of women's suffrage. This wave is considered to have ended with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (1919), granting women over the age of 21 the right to vote in all states.
After this achievement, there would not be any movement until the 60’, when the second-wave of feminism beggins... They have all they need to be housewives, but a lot of depressed, alcoholic, anxious or sick women are reported. Betty Friedan, an American feminist writer and sociologist, introduces her book “The Feminine Mystique”, introducing what Friedan called "the problem that has no name"—the widespread unhappiness of women in the middle of the 20th century, discussing the lives of several housewives from around the United States who were unhappy despite living in material comfort and being married with children. With this scenario, President Kennedy firms “The Equal Pay Act” of 1963 and the “Civil Rights Act” of 1964, that was to bar employers from discriminating on the basis of sex.
The third-wave began in the early 1990s, arising as a response to perceived failures of the second wave and also as a response to the backlash against initiatives and movements created by the second wave. An interpretation of gender and sexuality is central to much of the third wave's ideology, and features a strong debate between the differences among the sexes. Some said that there is a difference, for example psychologist Carol Gilligan, and others who thought the opposite.
In the first part of the movie “Mulan”, we can see her struggling between what society wants her to be and what she wants to be, Friedan’s “problem that has no name”. We can clearly see the woman and man stereotypes, described by the soldiers in the song “A girl worth fighting for”. After fighting that stereotype the whole movie, Mulan is seen as a hero, in the same way they would see a man... She fighted stereotypes and became what she wanted to be; she represents the women that fighted to become what they wanted to be... Are you what you want to be? Or are you struggling with stereotypes?
In 2020, Disney will release a new movie of Mulan, but this time it is not animated... Let’s hope it is just as worthy as the animated version, and teaches what it is to fight stereotypes and deserve your place.