It's just like every other social movement - there simply weren't organized groups working for those rights until fairly recently. I definitely don't have the background to talk about the class aspect of this (Wat Tyler's Rising, Chartists, etc.), or whether there was any kind of unified anti-racist movement before the abolitionists in the late eighteenth century, but when it comes to feminism before the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, we generally see individual women writing about what's wrong with the way women are treated/educated, and not collective action.

And as that 1848 date should indicate, it's not exactly the twentieth century movement that was successful. Women came to activism via the anti-slavery societies, which gave them opportunities to participate in public life in a way that they simply weren't supposed to - speaking to large crowds, alongside or even independently of their husbands! And while they suffered setbacksafter the achievement of abolition, there's a clear throughline of activism and activists from the 1840s to the achievement of women's suffrage. I'm going to be lazy here, though, and link to some relevant past answers on mine on the subject that discuss the timeline of the women's rights movement:

Were There Women Opposed to Suffrage?

How were feminist movements in countries with male-only compulsory military service (e.g. Finland, Singapore) affected by such policies, if at all? What did they think about such policies, which some men claim favours women since they had the priviledge to not serve?

How did the absence of universal male suffrage affect the UK women's suffrage movement?

Why political rights for women so late?