The British idea of the "progressive" modern woman appeared on the London stage in Sydney Grundy's comedy titled The New Woman (1894). The eponymous heroine of David Belasco's The Girl of the Golden West (1905) is sometimes signaled as the American version of the "new woman," although the concept traces back to the earlier woman suffrage movement as well as to the 1890s craze for bicycle riding and other physical recreations newly available to women. Like most actresses, the women playwrights associated with the Provincetown Players in the 1910s would be considered "new women," whether or not such women figured prominently as characters in their plays.
The Historical Dictionary of the American Theater. James Fisher.