State Social Reform 797in Britain. There the first women’s political organizations were created in
the 1860s, and women gained the right to vote in municipal elections in
1864 and for county and parish councils six years later. Women also gained
the right to enter university and made headway in achieving property
rights for married women, child custody, and the right to initiate divorce.
The movement for women’s rights in Britain coincided with the “new impe
rialism” that began in the 1880s (see Chapter 21). Concern among femi
nists with the condition of indigenous women in the empire, particularly
in India, where British women had more occasion to meet their counter
parts and viewed them as backward victims of barbaric religious and cul
tural practices, helped shape British feminism. British feminists came to
see themselves as the saviors of women in the colonies, while identifying
themselves with the good of their empire, a special place in the “civilizing
mission.” As one put it, “We are struggling not just for English women
alone, but for all the women, degraded, miserable, unheard of, for whose
life and happiness England has daily to answer to God.”
In 1889, the first International Congresses on Women’s Rights and Fem
inine Institutions took place in Paris. By 1900, more than 850 German
associations were working for women’s rights, including improved educa
tional and employment opportunities and equal wages. Near the end of the
nineteenth century, British women’s groups presented to Parliament a peti