Public Sentiment Analysis of Women's Rights Movements

This research article analyzes the evolution of public sentiment regarding women's rights movements, focusing on the suffragette movements from the early 1900s and the feminist resurgence of the 1960s and 1970s. The initial dataset comprises text records about the Suffragettes, with an emphasis on comparing movements across different time periods. The authors detail their methodology for building datasets, including a Pre-History Suffragettes dataset and a Feminism Resurgence dataset, each containing approximately 200-300 documents. The analysis includes a sentiment evaluation of nineteenth-century editorials, revealing a slight negative leaning that reflects the genre rather than the content. Additionally, the article discusses cluster analyses of the editorials, highlighting the geographical specificity of the issues surrounding women's suffrage. The sentiment analysis indicates fluctuations in public sentiment towards the suffragette movement, with an initial negative response followed by increased sympathy in the early 1900s, and a downturn in sentiment by the 1910s. The resurgence period shows a more neutral sentiment following the Voting Rights Act of 1965.