Latin American feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and achieving equal political, economic, cultural, personal, and social rights for Latin American women. This includes seeking to establish equal opportunities for women in education and employment. People who practice feminism by advocating or supporting the rights and equality of women are feminists.

Latin American feminism exists in the context of centuries of colonialism, the transportation and subjugation of slaves from Africa, and the mistreatment of native people. The origins of modern Latin American feminism can be traced back to the 1960s and 1970s social movements, where it encompasses the women's liberation movement, but prior feminist ideas have expanded before there were written records. While feminist movements in the region are often linked to the 1960s and 1970s, when women's liberation organizations started to gain prominence, the historical genealogy of Latin American feminism shows that feminist concepts are much older and more deeply rooted in the colonial past of the region. With various regions in Latin America and the Caribbean, the definition of feminism varies across different groups where there has been cultural, political, and social involvement. The expression of diversity and change from the viewpoint of those who have historically been marginalized, particularly through the experiences of colonialism and patriarchy has consistently been a focus of feminist philosophy in Latin America.

The emergence of the Latin American feminism movement is contributed to five key factors. It has been said that the beginning of the revolution for Latin American feminism started in the 1800s with two women, Manuela Sáenz in Ecuador and Juana Manuela Gorriti in Argentina. Prior to these movements, women had close to no rights after colonialism. However, women who belonged to wealthier, European families had more opportunities in education. Then in the 1920s, feminism was reignited and moved towards political and educational changes for women's rights. In the 1930-50s a Puerto Rican group of women founded what is now considered the current movement for Latin American women. Some of these movements included founding the needle industry such as working as sewists in factories. Then in the 1960s, the movement changed to advocate for bodily and economic rights of women. The 1970s had a downfall in the movement due to a laissez-faire liberalism combined with free market capitalism. After the fall of neoliberalism, the 1980s brought a resurgence of the feminist movement towards political rights. The 1980s also began to shed light on the topic of domestic violence. The 1990s made strides towards the legal equality of women. In today's society, Latin American feminism has been broken down into multiple subcategories by either ethnicity or topic awareness.

Since feminist theory often relies on Western literary works rather than personal experiences, Latin American feminist theory is a construct that has appeared only recently in order to give Latina women legitimacy in Eurocentric contexts. Latin American feminist theorists are known to not only get their sources from Western countries, but also from Latin American history, personal accounts, and research in the social sciences. There is a controversy known as “epistemic privilege” (epistemic privilege is known as the privilege a person knows or has first-hand experience on a particular subject. For example, a woman would know what issues impact them more than a man would), regarding how most Latina feminist philosophers enjoy a cultural and economic privilege that distances them from the living conditions of the majority of Latin American women. Feminist philosopher Ofelia Schutte has argued that “feminist philosophy requires a home in a broader Latin American Feminist theory and not in the discipline of philosophy in Latin America.”

Because Latin America is a vast area, the diversity of this feminist theory can make it difficult to characterize. However, several notable Latin feminist theorists include Marcela Rios Tobar, Ofelia Schutte, and Gloria Anzaldúa. Latina feminist philosopher Maria Lugones addressed ethnocentric racism, bilingualism, multiculturalism, and “interlinking registers of address.”^{[citation needed]} Many Latina feminists borrow concepts that Lugones introduced, such as “the role of language, bodies, objects, and places.” Graciela Hierro, born in 1928 in Mexico addressed “feminist ethics and the roles of feminism in public and academic spaces.

There is a fairly solid consensus among academics and activists that women's participation in leftist movements has been one of the central reasons for the development of Latin American feminism. However, some Latin American countries were able to attain legal rights for women in rightist, conservative contexts. Julie Shayne argues that there are five factors which contributed to the emergence of revolutionary feminism:

The movement developed in close connection to Anglo-American feminism, especially liberal feminism, which placed a heavy focus on women's economic independence, political and legal equality, and bodily autonomy, including sexual and reproductive rights. However, there has been resistance to including the viewpoints of excluded groups, especially in relation to race, class, and sexuality, inside the mainstream feminist movement. A white, urban, middle-class elite has mainly ruled the feminist debate in Latin America. This elite has an obvious heterosexist bias and has ignored the experiences of lesbians and indigenous women. Indigenous feminists argue for a collective defense of indigenous women's rights as part of larger community and cultural battles, criticizing the individualistic nature of liberal feminism. Lesbian feminists, on the other hand, confront lesbophobia within the feminist movement and fight the hetero-sexualization of society, which they view as a tool for oppressing women. The two groups have brought up major concerns regarding liberal feminism's flaws especially its tendency to overlook racial, class, and colonial issues.

Although the term feminist would not be used to describe women's rights advocates until the 1890s, many women of the nineteenth century, mostly elite or middle class, tried to challenge dominant gender norms.^{[citation needed]}