Women's liberation movement
The women's liberation movement (WLM) was a political alignment of women and feminist intellectualism. It 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.[1]
Women's liberation movement
1960s – 1980s
Institutional sexism
- Equality for women
- General human rights for all people
- Awareness of women's issues
- Political reforms
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—legalized 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 piecemeal 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.[2]
Background[edit]
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.[3] 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,[4] the Irish Housewives Association,[5] 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.[6][7] Still other organizations, involved in the mass movement of women into the workforce 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.[8] 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.[9][10] 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.[11]
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 labor, political access, and education through provisions for gender equality.[12] 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.[13] As ideology in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean shifted left, women in newly independent and still colonized countries saw a common goal in opposing imperialism. They focused their efforts to address gendered power imbalances in their quest for respect of human rights and nationalist goals.[14][15] 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.[16] 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.[17]
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.[18] 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.[19] The Black Power movement and global student movements protested the apparent double standards of the age and the authoritarian nature of social institutions.[20] 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.[21] Many of the activists participating in these causes would go on to participate in the feminist movement.[22]
Socially, the baby boom experienced after the Second World War, 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.[23] 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.[24] 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.[25][26] They were expected to work for lower wages than men and upon marriage, terminate their employment.[27][25][26] 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.[28]
Married women from Commonwealth countries and thus with a common law legal code were legally bound to have sex with their husbands upon demand. At the time, marital rape was not a concept in common law, as it was legally considered that women had given consent to regular intercourse upon marrying.[29] The state and church placed enormous pressure on young women to retain their virginity. Introduction of the birth control pill gave many men a sense that as women could not get pregnant, they could not say no to intercourse.[30] 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.[31] 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.[32] The Catholic Church issued the encyclical Humanae vitae in 1968, reiterating the ban on artificial contraception.[33] Abortion often required the consent of a spouse,[34] or approval by a board, as in Canada, wherein the decisions often revolved around whether pregnancy posed a threat to the woman's health or life.[35]
As women became more educated and joined the workforce, 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.[36] There had long been recognized 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.[37] 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.[38] 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".[39][40]
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.[41] 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.[42] 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.[43][44] Kurahashi Yumiko published her debut Partei in 1960, which critically examined the student movement.[45] 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.[46] In 1963, Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique, voicing the discontent felt by American women.[47]
Aims[edit]
As the women's suffrage movement emerged from the abolition movement, the women's liberation movement grew out of the struggle for civil rights.[48][49] 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.[50] 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.[48][49][51]
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.[52] They also wanted women, whose voices had been silenced to be able to express their own views on solutions.[53] 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.[48] A dilemma faced by movement members was how they could challenge the definition of femininity without compromising the principles of feminism.[48][54]
Women's historical participation in the world was virtually unknown, even to trained historians.[55][56] 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.[57][58] 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.[59] 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.[58] 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.[59]
Thousands of adherents joined the movement which began in the United States[60] and spread to Canada and Mexico.[54][61] In Europe, movements developed in Austria,[62] Belgium,[63] Denmark,[64] England,[65] France,[66] Germany,[67] Greece,[68] Iceland,[69] Ireland,[70] Italy,[71] The Netherlands,[52] Northern Ireland,[72] Norway,[73] Portugal,[74] Scotland,[75] Spain,[76] Sweden,[73] Switzerland[77] and Wales.[78] The liberationist movement also was active in Australia,[79] Fiji,[80] Guam,[81] India,[82] Israel,[83] Japan,[84] New Zealand,[85] Singapore,[86] South Korea,[87] and Taiwan.[88]
Key components of the movement were consciousness-raising sessions aimed at politicizing personal issues,[89][90] small group and limited organizational structure[91] and a focus on changing societal perception rather than reforming legislation.[10] 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.[92] 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.[93] Most liberationists banned the participation of men in their organizations.[94][95] Though often depicted in media as a sign of "man-hating", the 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.[96]
Surveillance[edit]
The FBI kept records on numerous participants in the WLM as well as spying on them and infiltrating their organizations.[196] 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.[197] The Royal Canadian Mounted Police spied upon liberationists in Canada,[198] as did the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation surveil WLM groups and participants in Australia.[199] 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. Having lived in a communal housing project or been affiliated with youth movements made liberationists targets and their meeting places were searched and materials were confiscated.[200]
Criticism[edit]
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.[207] 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.[208] 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.[209]
There was criticism of the movement not only from factions within the movement itself,[52][53] but from outsiders, like Hugh Hefner, 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.[210] "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.[53] 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.[211] 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.[212][213][214] 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.[213][215][216] 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.[217] 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.[97][214] 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.[97]
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[97] or Native Women who were routinely sterilized.[218] Their issues were not about limiting their families but having the freedom to form families.[219] 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.[220] 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.[213][221] 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.[222] 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 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 workweek, black women had to conform to dress codes imposed upon them.[223] 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.[224]