VOX POPULI, VOX FEMINAE (I): THE INFLUENCE OF THE FIRST WAVE FEMINISM ON THE LEGISLATION OF THE UNITED KINGDOM AND THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

The paper deals with the relationship between the organized feminist movement and legislative solutions adopted in the United Kingdom and the United States ofAmerica unified by their common law tradition. The women's movement in the historical sense consisted of three waves that individually and in their totality aimed to improve and revitalize women's rights. The paper exclusively analyses the legal-historical context of origin and development and the legal consequences of the first wave. Its goal was the realization of formal legal equality for women and men. Consequently, the paper is composed oftwo units that chronologically follow the development of legislative solutions in the selected countries. Furthermore, the specific circumstances of the social order immanent in those climates are taken into account. Special emphasis is placed on the question of acquiring the right to vote as the ultimate constitutional and political right, and thus on all the historical circumstances that led to its realization. The concluding considerations provide a comparative presentation of the specificities of two Anglo-Saxon legal orders and their manifestations. Also, the previously presented social circumstances are correlated with economic and legal arrangements.