The women's liberation movement (WLM) was
a political alignment of women and feminist
intellectualism that emerged in the late 1960s
and continued into the 1980s primarily in
the industrialized nations of the Western
world, which effected great change (political,
intellectual, cultural) throughout the world.
The WLM branch of Radical feminism, based
in contemporary philosophy, comprised women
of racially- and culturally-diverse backgrounds
who proposed that economic, psychological,
and social freedom were necessary for women
to progress from being second-class citizens
in their societies.Towards achieving the equality
of women, the WLM questioned the cultural
and legal validity of patriarchy and the practical
validity of the social and sexual hierarchies
used to control and limit the legal and physical
independence of women in society. Women's
liberationists proposed that sexism — legalised
formal and informal sex-based discrimination
predicated on the existence of the social
construction of gender — was the principal
political problem with the power dynamics
of their societies. In general, the WLM proposed
socio-economic change from the political Left,
rejected the idea that piece-meal equality,
within and according to social class, would
eliminate sexual discrimination against women,
and fostered the tenets of humanism, especially
the respect for human rights of all people.
In the decades during which the Women's Liberation
Movement flourished, liberationists successfully
changed how women were perceived in their
cultures, redefined the socio-economic and
the political roles of women in society, and
transformed mainstream society.
== Background ==
The wave theory of social development holds
that intense periods of social activity are
followed by periods of remission, in which
the activists involved intensely in mobilization
are systematically marginalized and isolated.
After the intense period fighting for women's
suffrage, the common interest which had united
international feminists left the women's movement
without a single focus upon which all could
agree. Ideological differences between radicals
and moderates, led to a split and a period
of deradicalization, with the largest group
of women's activists spearheading movements
to educate women on their new responsibilities
as voters. Organizations like the African
National Congress Women's League, the Irish
Housewives Association, the League of Women
Voters, the Townswomen's Guilds and the Women's
Institutes supported women and tried to educate
them on how to use their new rights to incorporate
themselves into the established political
system. Still other organizations, involved
in the mass movement of women into the work
force during World War I and World War II
and their subsequent exit at the end of the
war with concerted official efforts to return
to family life, turned their efforts to labor
issues. The World YWCA and Zonta International,
were leaders in these efforts, mobilizing
women to gather information on the situation
of working women and organize assistance programs.
Increasingly, radical organizations, like
the American National Women's Party, were
marginalized, by media which denounced feminism
and its proponents as "severe neurotics responsible
for the problems of" society. Those who were
still attached to the radical themes of equality
were typically unmarried, employed, socially
and economically advantaged and seemed to
the larger society to be deviant.In countries
throughout Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, the
Middle East and South America efforts to decolonize
and replace authoritarian regimes, which largely
began in the 1950s and stretched through the
1980s, initially saw the state overtaking
the role of radical feminists. For example,
in Egypt, the 1956 Constitution eliminated
gender barriers to labour, political access,
and education through provisions for gender
equality. Women in Argentina, Brazil, Chile,
Cuba, Nicaragua and other Latin American countries
had worked for an end to dictatorships in
their countries. As those governments turned
to socialist policies, the state aimed to
eliminate gender inequality through state
action. As ideology in Asia, Africa and the
Caribbean shifted left, women in newly independent
and still colonized countries saw a common
goal in fighting imperialism. They focused
their efforts to address gendered power imbalances
in their quest for respect of human rights
and nationalist goals. This worldwide movement
towards decolonization and the realignment
of international politics into Cold War camps
after the end of World War II, usurped the
drive for women's enfranchisement, as universal
suffrage and nationhood became the goal for
activists. A Pan-African awareness and global
recognition of blackness as a unifying point
for struggle, led to a recognition by numerous
marginalized groups that there was potential
to politicize their oppression.In their attempt
to influence these newly independent countries
to align with the United States, in the polarized
Cold War climate, racism in U.S. policy became
a stumbling block to the foreign policy objective
to become the dominant superpower. Black leaders
were aware of the favorable climate for securing
change and pushed forward the Civil Rights
Movement to address racial inequalities. They
sought to eliminate the damage of oppression,
using liberation theory and a movement which
sought to create societal transformation in
the way people thought about others by infusing
the disenfranchised with political power to
change the power structures. The Black Power
movement and global student movements protested
the apparent double standards of the age and
the authoritarian nature of social institutions.
From Czechoslovakia to Mexico, in diverse
locations like Germany, France, Italy, and
Japan, among others, students protested the
civil, economic and political inequalities,
as well as involvement in the Vietnam War.
Many of the activists participating in these
causes would go on to participate in the feminist
movement.Socially, the baby boom experienced
after World War II, the relative worldwide
economic growth in the post-war years, the
expansion of the television industry sparking
improved communications, as well as access
to higher education for both women and men
led to an awareness of the social problems
women faced and the need for a cultural change.
At the time, women were economically dependent
on men and neither the concept of patriarchy
nor a coherent theory about the power relationships
between men and women in society existed.
If they worked, positions available to women
were typically in light manufacturing or agricultural
work and a limited segment of positions in
the service industries, such as bookkeeping,
domestic labor, nursing, secretarial and clerical
work, retail sales, or school teaching. They
were expected to work for lower wages than
men and upon marriage, terminate their employment.
Women were unable to obtain bank accounts
or credit, making renting housing impossible,
without a man's consent. In many countries
they were not allowed to go into public spaces
without a male chaperone.Married women from
countries founded the British colonial system
and thus with a legal code based on English
law were legally bound to have sex with their
husbands upon demand. Marital rape was not
a concept, as under law women had given consent
to regular intercourse upon marrying. The
state and church, placed enormous pressure
on young women to retain their virginity.
Introduction of the pill, gave many men a
sense that as women could not get pregnant,
they could not say no to intercourse. Though
by the 1960s the pill was widely available,
prescription was tightly controlled and in
many countries, dissemination of information
about birth control was illegal. Even after
the pill was legalized, contraception remained
banned in numerous countries, like Ireland
where condoms were banned and the pill could
only be prescribed to control menstrual cycles.
The Catholic Church issued the encyclical
Humanae vitae in 1968, reiterating the ban
on artificial contraception. Abortion often
required the consent of a spouse, or approval
by a board, like in Canada, wherein the decisions
often revolved around whether pregnancy posed
a threat to the woman's health or life.As
women became more educated and joined the
work force, their home responsibilities remained
largely unchanged. Though families increasingly
depended on dual incomes, women carried most
of the responsibility for domestic work and
care of children. There had long been recognition
by society in general of the inequalities
in civil, socio-economic, and political agency
between women and men. However, the Women's
Liberation Movement was the first time that
the idea of challenging sexism gained wide
acceptance. Literature on sex, such as the
Kinsey Reports, and the development and distribution
of the birth control pill, created a climate
wherein women began to question the authority
others wielded over their decisions regarding
their bodies and their morality. Many of the
women who participated in the movement, were
aligned with leftist politics and after 1960,
with the development of Cold War polarization,
took their inspiration from Maoist theory.
Slogans such as "workers of the world unite"
turned into "women of the world unite" and
key features like consciousness-raising and
egalitarian consensus-based policies "were
inspired by similar techniques used in China".Into
this backdrop of world events, Simone de Beauvoir
published The Second Sex in 1949, which was
translated into English in 1952. In the book,
de Beauvoir put forward the idea that equality
did not require women be masculine to become
empowered. With her famous statement, "One
is not born, but rather becomes, a woman",
she laid the groundwork for the concept of
gender as a social construct, as opposed to
a biological trait. The same year, Margaret
Mead published Male and Female, which though
it analyzed primitive societies of New Guinea,
showed that gendered activities varied between
cultures and that biology had no role in defining
which tasks were performed by men or women.
By 1965, de Beauvoir and Mead's works had
been translated into Danish and became widely
influential with feminists. Kurahashi Yumiko
published her debut Partei in 1960, which
critically examined the student movement.
The work started a trend in Japan of feminist
works which challenged the opportunities available
to women and mocked conventional power dynamics
in Japanese society. In 1963, Betty Friedan
published The Feminine Mystique, voicing the
discontent felt by American women.
== Aims ==
As the Women's Suffrage movement emerged from
the Abolition Movement, the Women's Liberation
Movement grew out of the struggle for civil
rights. Though challenging patriarchy and
the anti-patriarchal message of the Women's
Liberation Movement was considered radical,
it was not the only, nor the first, radical
movement in the early period of second-wave
feminism. Rather than simply desiring legal
equality, those participating in the movement
believed that the moral and social climate
which perceived women as second-class citizens
needed to change. Though most groups operated
independently—there were no national umbrella
organizations—there were unifying philosophies
of women participating in the movement. Challenging
patriarchy and the hierarchical organization
of society which defined women as subordinate
in both public and private spheres, liberationists
believed that women should be free to define
their own individual identity as part of human
society.One of the reasons that women who
supported the movement chose not to create
a single approach to addressing the problem
of women being treated as second-class citizens
was that they did not want to foster an idea
that anyone was an expert or that any one
group or idea could address all of the societal
problems women faced. They also wanted women,
whose voices had been silenced to be able
to express their own views on solutions. Rejecting
authority and espousing participatory democracy
as well as direct action, they promoted a
wide agenda including civil rights, eliminating
objectification of women, ethnic empowerment,
granting women reproductive rights, increasing
opportunities for women in the workplace,
peace, and redefining familial roles, as well
as gay and lesbian liberation. A dilemma faced
by movement members was how they could challenge
the definition of femininity without compromising
the principals of feminism.Women's historical
participation in the world was virtually unknown,
even to trained historians. Women's roles
in historic events were not covered in academic
texts and not taught in schools. Even the
fact that women had been denied the vote was
something few university students were aware
of in the era. To understand the wider implications
of women's experiences, WLM groups launched
women's studies programs introducing feminist
history, sociology and psychology to higher
education and adult education curricula to
counter gender biases in teaching these subjects.
Writing women back into history became extremely
important in the period with attention to
the differences of experiences based on class,
ethnic background, race and sexual orientation.
The courses became widespread by the end of
the decade in Britain, Canada and the United
States, and were also introduced in such places
as Italy and Norway.Thousands of adherents
joined the movement which began in the United
States and spread to Canada and Mexico. In
Europe, movements developed in Austria Belgium,
Denmark, England, France, Germany, Greece,
Iceland, Ireland, Italy, The Netherlands,
Northern Ireland, Norway, Portugal, Scotland,
Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Wales. The
liberationist movement also was active in
Australia, Fiji, Guam, India, Israel, Japan,
New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan.Key
components of the movement were consciousness-raising
sessions aimed at politicizing personal issues,
small group and limited organizational structure
and a focus on changing societal perception
rather than reforming legislation. For example,
liberationists did not support reforming family
codes to allow abortion, instead, they believed
that neither medical professionals nor the
state should have the power to limit women's
complete control of their own bodies. They
favored abolishing laws which limited women's
rights over their reproduction, believing
such control was an individual right, not
subject to moralistic majority views. Most
liberationists banned the participation of
men in their organizations. Though often depicted
in media as a sign of "man-hating", separation
was a focused attempt to eliminate defining
women via their relationship to men. Since
women's inequality within their employment,
family and society were commonly experienced
by all women, separation meant unity of purpose
to evaluate their second-class status.
== Development ==
=== North America ===
In Canada and the United States, the movement
developed out of the Civil Rights Movement,
Anti-War sentiment toward the Vietnam War,
the Native Rights Movement and the New Left
student movement of the 1960s. Between 1965
and 1966, papers presented at meetings of
the Students for a Democratic Society and
articles published in journals, such as the
Canadian Random began advocating for women
to embark on a path of self-discovery free
from male scrutiny. In 1967, the first Women's
Liberation organizations formed in major cities
like Berkeley, Boston, Chicago, New York City
and Toronto. Quickly organizations spread
across both countries. In Mexico, the first
group of liberationists formed in 1970, inspired
by the student movement and US women's liberationists.Organizations
were loosely organized, without a hierarchical
power structure and favored all-women participation
to eliminate defining women or their autonomy
by their association with men. Groups featured
consciousness raising discussions on a wide
variety of issues, the importance of having
freedom to make choices, and the importance
of changing societal attitudes and perceptions
of women's roles. Canadian Women's Lib groups
typically incorporated a class-based component
into their theory of oppression which was
mostly missing from U.S. liberation theory,
which focused almost exclusively on sexism
and a belief that women's oppression stemmed
from their gender and not as a result of their
economic or social class. In Quebec, women's
and Quebec's autonomy were entwined issues
with women struggling for the right to serve
as jurors.Advocating public self-expression
by participating in protests and sit-ins,
liberationists demonstrated against discriminatory
hiring and wage practices in Canada, while
in the US liberationists protested the Miss
America Beauty Pageant for objectifying women.
In both countries Women's Liberation groups
were involved protesting their legislators
for abortion rights for women. In Mexico liberationists
protested at the Monument to the Mother on
Mother's Day to challenge the idea that all
women were destined to be mothers. Challenging
gender definitions and the sexual relationship
to power drew lesbians into the movement in
both the United States and Canada. Because
liberationists believed that sisterhood was
a uniting component to women's oppression,
lesbians were not seen as a threat to other
women. Another important aspect for North
American women was developing spaces for women
to meet with other women, offer counseling
and referral services, provide access to feminist
materials, and establish women's shelters
for women who were in abusive relationships.Increasingly
mainstream media portrayed liberationists
as man-haters or deranged outcasts. To gain
legitimacy for the recognition of sexual discrimination,
the media discourse on women's issues was
increasingly shaped by the liberal feminist's
reformist aims. As liberationists were marginalized,
they increasingly became involved in single
focus issues, such as violence against women.
By the mid-1970s, the Women's Liberation Movement
had been effective in changing the worldwide
perception of women, bringing sexism to light
and moving reformists far to the left in their
policy aims for women, but in the haste to
distance themselves from the more radical
elements, liberal feminists attempted to erase
their success and rebrand the movement as
the Women's Movement.
=== Europe ===
In Europe, the women's liberation movement
started in the late 1960s and continued through
the 1980s. Inspired by events in North America
and triggered by the growing presence of women
in the labour market, the movement soon gained
momentum in Britain and the Scandinavian countries.
Though influenced by leftist politics, liberationists
in general were resistant to any political
order which ignored women entirely or relegated
their issues to the sidelines. Women's liberation
groups in Europe were distinguished from other
feminist activists by their focus on women's
rights to control their own bodies and sexuality,
as well as their direct actions aimed at provoking
the public and making society aware of the
issues faced by women.There were robust Women's
Liberation movements in Western European countries,
including developments in Greece, Portugal
and Spain, which in the period were emerging
from dictatorships. Many different types of
actions were held throughout Europe. To increase
public awareness of the problems of equal
pay, liberationists in Denmark staged a bus
sit in, where they demanded lower fares than
male passengers to demonstrate their wage
gap. Swedish members of Grupp 8 heckled politicians
at campaign rallies, demanding to know why
women were only allowed part-time jobs and
thus were ineligible for pensions. To address
the objectification of women, Belgian liberationists
protested at beauty pageants, Dolle Minas
in the Netherlands and Nyfeministene of Norway
invaded male-only bars, Irish Women United
demonstrated against male-only bathing at
Forty Foot promontory and Portuguese women
dressed as a bride, a housewife and a sex
symbol, marching in Eduardo VII Park.Women
in England, Scotland and Wales led Reclaim
the Night marches to challenge the notion
that women's behavior caused the violence
perpetrated against them. Spanish liberationists
from the Colectivo Feminista Pelvis (Pelvis
Feminist Collective), Grup per l'Alliberament
de la Dona (Group for Women's Liberation)
and Mujeres Independientes (Independent Women)
carried funeral wreaths through the streets
of Mallorca calling for an end to sexual abuse
and a judicial system which allowed men to
use alcohol or passion as mitigating factors
for sexual violence. In Iceland, women virtually
shut down the country; when spurred by liberationists,
90% of them took Women's Day Off and refused
to participate in household duties or work,
instead attending a protest rally.In almost
all Western European countries liberationists
fought for elimination of barriers to free
and unrestricted access to contraception and
abortion. In Austria, to advocate for abolition
of section 144 of their criminal code, activists
used street theater performance. Prominent
French activists declared their criminal actions
signing the Manifesto of the 343, admitting
to having had abortions, as did German activists
who signed the Manifesto of the 374. Irish
activists took the train and crossed into
Northern Ireland to secure prohibited contraception
devices and upon their return flouted authorities
by passing the contraband to the public. In
the UK, an uneasy alliance formed between
liberationists, the National Abortion Campaign
and trade unionists to fight a series of bills
designed to restrict abortion rights. In Italy,
50,000 women marched through the streets of
Rome demanding their right to control their
own bodies, but as was typically the result
throughout Europe, compromise reform to existing
law was passed by the government, limiting
the decision by gestation or requiring preliminary
medical authorization.Throughout the period,
publishing was crucial for disseminating the
theory and ideas of liberation and other feminist
schools of thought. Initially many activists
relied on translations of material from the
US, but increasingly the focus was on producing
country-specific editions, or local journals
to allow activists to adapt the movement slogan
the "personal is political" to reflect their
own experiences. Journals and newspapers founded
by liberationists included Belgium's Le Petit
livre rouge des femmes (The Little Red Book
of Women), France's Le torchon brûle (Waging
the Battle), Greece's Gia tin Apeleftherosi
ton Gynaikon (For the Liberation of Women),
Italy's Sottosopra (Upside Down), the Scottish
The Tayside Women's Liberation Newsletter
or the British Spare Rib, among many others.
In the UK, a news service called the Women's
Information and Referral Service (WIRES) distributed
news of WLM groups throughout the nation.Books
like Die Klosterschule (The Convent School,
1968) by Barbara Frischmuth, which evaluated
patriarchy in the parochial schools of Austria
and The Descent of Woman (1972) by Welsh author
and feminist Elaine Morgan, brought women
into the movement who thought that their lives
differed from those of women in large urban
settings where the movement originated. Other
influential publications included the British
edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves (1971) edited
by Angela Phillips and Jill Rakusen; Frauenhandbuch
Nr. 1: Abtreibung und Verhütungsmittel (Women's
Guide # 1: Abortion and Contraceptives, 1971)
produced in Germany by Helke Sander and Verena
Stefan and Skylla sig själv (Self-blame,
1976) by Swede Maria-Pia Boëthius, which
evaluated rape culture applied analysis and
solutions to local areas. In some cases, books
themselves became the focus of liberationists'
protests over censorship, as in the case of
the Norwegian demonstration at the publishing
house Aschehoug, which was forced to publish
a translation of the Swedish text Frihet,
jämlikhet och systerskap (Freedom, Equality
and Sisterhood, 1970), or the international
outcry which resulted from the ban and arrest
of Portuguese authors Maria Teresa Horta,
Maria Isabel Barreno and Maria Velho da Costa
over their book Novas Cartas Portuguesas (New
Portuguese Letters, 1972).As the idea of women's
autonomy gained mainstream approval, governments
and more reformist minded women's groups adopted
liberationists' ideas and began incorporating
them into compromise solutions. By the early
1980s, most activists in the Women's Liberation
Movements in Europe moved on to other single
focus causes or transitioned into organizations
which were political.
=== Oceania ===
Spreading from the United States and Britain,
the Women's Liberation Movement reached Oceania
in 1969. The first organizations were formed
in Sydney in 1969, and by 1970 had reached
Adelaide and Melbourne, as well as Wellington
and Auckland. The following year, organizations
were formed at the University of the South
Pacific in Fiji and in Guam. As in the US
and other places where the movement flourished,
small consciousness-raising groups with a
limited organizational structure were the
norm and the focus was on changing societal
perception rather than legislation.Involved
in public protests, liberationists demonstrated
at beauty pageants to protest women's objectification,
and invaded male-only pubs. In Australia they
ran petition drives and protests in favor
of legalizing abortion and in Auckland led
a funeral procession through Albert Park to
demonstrate lack of progress on issues which
were of concern to women. Liberationists developed
multiple publications such as Broadsheet,
Liberaction, MeJane, The Circle and Women's
Liberation Newsletter to address issues and
concerns;. They founded women's shelters and
women's centers for meetings and child care
services, which were open to all women, be
they socialists, lesbians, indigenous women,
students, workers or homemakers. The diversity
of adherents fractured the movement by the
early 1980s, as groups began focusing on specific
interests rather than solely on sexism.
=== Asia ===
By the 1970s, the movement had spread to Asia
with Women's Liberation organizations forming
in Japan in 1970. The Yom Kippur War raised
awareness of the subordinate status of Israeli
women, fostering the growth of the WLM. In
India, 1974 was a pivotal year when activists
from the Navnirman Movement against corruption
and the economic crisis, encouraged women
to organize direct actions to challenge traditional
leadership. In 1975, liberationist ideas in
South Korea were introduced by Yi Hyo-jae
a professor at Ewha Womans University, after
she had read western texts on the movement
which were first translated into Korean in
1973. Similarly, Hsiu-lien Annette Lu, who
had completed her graduate courses in the
United States, brought liberationist ideas
to Taiwan, when she returned and began publishing
in the mid-1970s.In Singapore and other Asian
countries, conscious effort was made to distinguish
their movement from decadent, "free sex" Western
feminist ideals, while simultaneously addressing
issues that were experienced worldwide by
women. In India, the struggle for women's
autonomy was rarely separated from the struggle
against the caste system and in Israel, though
their movement more closely resembled the
WLM in the US and Europe, the oppression of
Palestinian women was a focal area. In Japan,
the movement focused on freeing women from
societal perceptions of limitations because
of their sex, rather than on a stand for equality.
In South Korea, women workers' concerns merged
with liberationist ideas within the broader
fight against dictatorship, whereas in Taiwan,
theories of respect for women and eliminating
double-standards were promoted by weaving
in Confucianist philosophy.
== Surveillance ==
The FBI kept records on numerous participants
in the WLM, both spying on them and infiltrating
their organizations. Roberta Sapler, a participant
in the movement between 1968 and 1973 in Pittsburgh,
wrote an article regarding her attempts to
obtain the FBI file kept on her during the
period. Similarly, the Royal Canadian Mounted
Police spied upon liberationists in Canada,
as did the Australian Security Intelligence
Organisation surveil WLM groups and participants
in Australia. In Germany, the Federal Office
for the Protection of the Constitution (German:
Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz) kept tabs
on activists participating in women's center
activities. Merely having lived in a communal
housing project or been affiliated with rebellious
youth movements made liberationists targets
for their meeting places to be searched and
materials to be confiscated.
== Criticism ==
The philosophy practiced by liberationists
assumed a global sisterhood of support working
to eliminate inequality without acknowledging
that women were not united; other factors,
such as age, class, ethnicity, and opportunity
(or lack thereof) created spheres wherein
women's interests diverged, and some women
felt underrepresented by the WLM. While many
women gained an awareness of how sexism permeated
their lives, they did not become radicalized
and were uninterested in overthrowing society.
They made changes in their lives to address
their individual needs and social arrangements,
but were unwilling to take action on issues
that might threaten their socio-economic status.
Liberationist theory also failed to recognize
a fundamental difference in fighting oppression.
Combating sexism had an internal component,
whereby one could change the basic power structures
within family units and personal spheres to
eliminate the inequality. Class struggle and
the fight against racism are solely external
challenges, requiring public action to eradicate
inequality.There was criticism of the movement
not only from factions within the movement
itself, but from outsiders, like Hugh Heffner,
Playboy founder, who launched a campaign to
expose all the "highly irrational, emotional,
kookie trends" of feminism in an effort to
tear apart feminist ideas that were "unalterably
opposed to the romantic boy-girl society"
promoted by his magazine. "Women's libbers"
were widely characterized as "man-haters"
who viewed men as enemies, advocated for all-women
societies, and encouraged women to leave their
families behind. Semanticist Nat Kolodney
argued that while women were oppressed by
social structures and rarely served in tyrannical
roles over the male population as a whole,
men in general were not oppressors of women
either. Instead, social constructs and the
difficulty of removing systems which had long
served their purpose exploited both men and
women. Women's liberationists acknowledged
that patriarchy affects both men and women,
with the former receiving many privileges
from it, but focused on the impact of systemic
sexism and misogyny on women throughout the
world.
To many women activists in the American Indian
Movement, black Civil Rights Movement, Chicana
Movement, as well as Asians and other minorities,
the activities of the primarily white, middle-class
women in the Women's Liberation Movement were
focused specifically on sex-based violence
and the social construction of gender as a
tool of sex-based oppression. By evaluating
all economic, socio-cultural, and political
issues through the lens of sexism without
pairing it with racism and classism, liberationists
often poorly represented women of color in
their analyses. While women of color recognized
that sexism was an issue, some did not see
how it could be separated from the issue of
race or class, which compounds to impact their
access to education, health care, housing,
jobs, legal justice, and the poverty and violence
which permeates their lives. For women who
did not speak English, or spoke it as a second
language, sexism had little to do with the
ability to protect herself or utilize existing
systems. The focus on personal freedom was
another divergence between white women and
women of color. Some did not see the intrinsic
connection between the liberation of women
and the liberation of men that was advocated
for by the Women's Liberation Movement and
felt that feminists did not care about the
inequalities suffered by men; they felt that
the liberation of women without the liberation
of men from policies that keep men of color
from obtaining jobs and limit their civil
rights, further preventing them from being
able to protect their families, neither improved
humanity as a whole nor improved the plight
experienced by families. Dorothy Height, president
of the National Council of Negro Women, expressed
that the best way black women could help themselves
was to help their men gain equality.Regarding
the "sex-positive" sect that broke away from
the women's liberation movement, extending
personal freedom to sexual freedom, the meaning
of being free to have relations with whoever
one wanted, was lost on black women who had
been sexually assaulted and raped with impunity
for centuries or Native Women who were routinely
sterilized. Their issues were not about limiting
their families but having the freedom to form
families. It had very little meaning in the
traditional Chicana culture wherein women
were required to be virgins until marriage
and remain naïve in her marriage. Though
invited to participate within the Women's
Liberation Movement, many women of color cautioned
against the single focus on sexism, finding
it to be an incomplete analysis without the
consideration of racism. Likewise, though
many lesbians saw commonalities with Women's
Liberation through the goals of eponymous
liberation from sex-based oppression, which
included fighting against homophobia, others
believed that the focus was too narrow to
confront the issues they faced. Differences
in the understanding of gender and how it
relates to and informs sex-based oppression
and systemic sexism called attention to differences
in issues. For example, many liberationists
rejected the performance of femininity as
a positive behavior, which meant that white
lesbians who actively chose to perform femininity
had to decide between their desire to be feminine-presenting
and their rejection of sexual objectification.
Jackie Anderson, an activist and philosopher,
observed that in the black lesbian community
being able to dress up made them feel confident
because during the work week, black women
had to conform to dress codes imposed upon
them. This was and continues to be a sentiment
held by most women, who tend to believe that
the feeling of confidence derived from performing
femininity as dictated by the sexist status
quo is the same as empowerment.
== Legacy ==
The Women's Liberation Movement created a
global awareness of patriarchy and sexism.
By bringing matters that had long been considered
private issues into the public view and linking
those issues to deepen understanding about
how systemic suppression of women's rights
in society are interrelated, liberationists
made innovative contributions to feminist
theory. Desiring to know about women's historic
contributions but often being thwarted in
their search due to centuries of censoring
and blocking of women's intellectual work,
liberationists brought the study of power
relationships, including those of sex and
diversity, into the social sciences. They
launched women's studies programs and publishing
houses to ensure that a more culturally comprehensive
history of the complex nature of society was
developed.In an effort to distance themselves
from the politics and ideas of women in the
Liberation Movement, as well as the personal
politics which emerged, many second-wave feminists
distanced themselves from the early movement.
Meaghan Morris, an Australian scholar of popular
culture stated that later feminists could
not associate themselves with the ideas and
politics of the period and maintain their
respect. And yet, liberationists succeeded
in pushing the dominant liberal feminists
far to the left of their original aims and
forced them to include goals that address
sexual discrimination. Jean Curthoys argued
that in the rush to distance themselves from
liberationists, an unconscious amnesia rewrote
the history of their movement, and failed
to grasp the achievement that, without a religious
connotation, the movement created an "ethic
of the irreducible value of human beings."
Phrases that were used in the movement, like
"consciousness raising" and "male chauvinism,"
became keywords associated with the movement.
=== Influential publications ===
Barreno, Maria Isabel; Horta, Maria Teresa;
Velho da Costa, Maria (1975). Land, Helen
R. (translator), ed. The Three Marias: New
Portuguese Letters (1st English ed.). Garden
City, New York: Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-385-01853-1.
Original publication (1972) Novas Cartas Portuguesas
(in Portuguese) Lisbon, Portugal Estudios
Cor.
Benston, Margaret (September 1969). "The Political
Economy of Women's Liberation" (PDF). Monthly
Review. New York, New York: Monthly Review
Foundation. 21 (4). doi:10.14452/MR-021-04-1969-08_2.
ISSN 0027-0520.
Boëthius, Maria-Pia (1976). Skylla sig sjalv:
en bok om våldtäkt [Self-blame: A book of
rape] (in Swedish). Stockholm, Sweden: Liber
Förlag. OCLC 480560113.
Brownmiller, Susan (1975). Against Our Will:
Men, Women and Rape. New York, New York: Simon
& Schuster. ISBN 0-671-22062-4.
Ehrenreich, Barbara; English, Deirdre (1973).
Witches, Midwives & Nurses: A History of Women
Healers. Old Westbury, New York: Feminist
Press.
Firestone, Shulamith (1972). The Dialectic
of Sex (PDF) (revised ed.). New York, New
York: Bantam Books. Archived from the original
(PDF) on 1 February 2018.
Firestone, Shulamith; Koedt, Anne, eds. (1968).
Notes From the First Year. New York, New York:
New York Radical Women. OCLC 28655057. Retrieved
27 May 2018.
Greer, Germaine (1970). The Female Eunuch.
London, England: MacGibbon & Kee. ISBN 978-0-261-63208-0.
Hägg, Maud; Werkmäster, Barbro (1972). Frihet,
jämlikhet, systerskap: en handbok för kvinnor
[Freedom, Equality and Sisterhood: A handbook
for women] (in Swedish). Stockholm, Sweden:
Författarförlaget. ISBN 978-9-170-54075-2.
Johnston, Jill (1973). Lesbian Nation: The
Feminist Solution. New York, New York: Simon
and Schuster. ISBN 978-0-671-21433-3.
Koedt, Anne (1968). The Myth of the Vaginal
Orgasm. Adelaide, South Australia: Women's
Liberation Movement of Adelaide. OCLC 741539766.
In 1970 editions were released in London and
Boston
Kool-Smit, J. E. (1967). "Het onbehagen bij
de vrouw" [The Discontent of Women] (PDF).
De Gids (in Dutch). Amsterdam, The Netherlands:
De Groene Amsterdammer (9–10): 267–281.
ISSN 0016-9730. Archived from the original
(PDF) on 12 April 2018.
Mainardi, Pat (1970). The Politics of Housework.
Boston, Massachusetts: New England Free Press.
OCLC 41038147.
Millett, Kate (1970). Sexual politics. New
York, New York: Ballantine Books. ISBN 978-0-345-29270-4.
Mitchell, Juliet (1971). Woman's Estate. Harmondsworth,
Middlesex, England: Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-021425-3.
Morgan, Elaine (1972). The Descent of Woman.
London, England: Souvenir Press. ISBN 0-285-62063-0.
Morgan, Robin (1970). Sisterhood Is Powerful
: An Anthology of Writings from Women's Liberation
Movement. New York, New York: Random House.
OCLC 606144056.
Rich, Adrienne (1976). Of Woman Born: Motherhood
as experience and institution. New York, New
York: Bantam Books. ISBN 978-0-553-11365-5.
Sarachild, Kathie (1970). "A Program for Feminist
'Consciousness Raising'". Notes From the Second
Year: Women's Liberation. New York, New York:
Radical Feminism: 78–80. OCLC 70702435.
Retrieved 27 May 2018.
Sarachild, Kathie (1973). "Consciousness Raising:
A Radical Weapon" (PDF). Feminist Revolution.
New York, New York: Redstockings: 144–150.
Archived from the original (PDF) on 27 May
2017. Retrieved 27 May 2018.
Vinder, K. (pseud.) (1975). Kvinde kend din
krop: En håndbog [Woman know your body: A
handbook] (in Danish). Copenhagen, Denmark:
Tiderne Skifter. ISBN 8-779-736-254.
== See also ==
Feminism
Radical feminism
