Lester Frank Ward: Selections
This author is one of the earliest formulators of feminism and is presented here as the ‘other side’ to the anti-feminist stance.
Ward advocated for equal rights for women and at times drew on metaphors and analogies from his interest in the study of the natural world to support his arguments. He gave a speech on the topic to the Fourteenth Dinner of the Six O’clock Club in Washington on April 26, 1888, at Willard’s Hotel. Ward was of the opinion that “there is no fixed rule by which Nature has intended that one sex should excel the other, any more than there is any fixed point beyond which either cannot develop.” Ward summarized his position as “true science teaches that the elevation of woman is the only sure road to the evolution of man.” Despite Ward’s interest in the topic of equal rights for women, Clifford H. Scott summarised that “practically all the suffragists ignored” Ward.