women's liberation movement

the multifaceted resurgence of Western FEMINISM from the 1960s. The experience of women activists in the CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT in the US prompted them to focus on the necessity to struggle against the subordination of women. In contrast to earlier women's movements, the women's liberation movement stressed that the ‘personal is political’ and saw ‘consciousness raising’ as the basis for all theory and practice. The emphasis was therefore on a concrete personal politics which would enable women to analyse the nature of their oppression and struggle to overcome it.

The movement is diverse and nonhierarchical, loosely structured and without rigid principles. There are no leaders and a concern with the liberation of women finds expression in many different social contexts. The strands of the movement are, however, united around one major tenet, i.e. that all women share a common oppression and one that is not shared by men, who are identified as benefiting from it.

A major concern in the early years of the movement was with the importance of sisterhood – a sense of identifying with and belonging to a global community of women. Hooks (1981), amongst others, has stressed the inauthenticity of this concept in the face of continuing racism within the movement. In the 1980s the divisions between women began to be explored alongside the social factors which unite them.

Trivialization of the term women's liberation movement (‘women's lib’) by the Western mass media has led many feminists to use ‘women's movement’ in preference. In doing so there is a danger that awareness of the movement's commitment to feminist principles and to the goal of liberation may be eroded. Nevertheless ‘women's movement’ has the advantage of being the more inclusive term and allows connections to be made between women's struggles cross-culturally see also FEMINIST THEORY.

Collins Dictionary of Sociology, 3rd ed. © HarperCollins Publishers 2000

Women’s Liberation Movement

appellation of modern day women’s rights advocacy. [Am. Hist.: Flexner, 396]

See: Feminism

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References in periodicals archive

First, the surveillance activities of the RCMP'S security branch extended well beyond the women's liberation movement in the period under examination.

Just Watch Us: RCMP Surveillance of the Women's Liberation Movement in Cold War Canada

I begin by asking Phillip what text elements he noticed before beginning to read (He was ready for this question because I've asked it practically everyday in our English II class.) Phillip noted that there were two emboldened phrases, "women's liberation movement" and "Simone de Beauvoir." I engaged the class in identifying or asking questions about the various text structures before we began to read.

Social studies and English UNITE: Teachers collaborate to promote literacy

The two articles in this issue on the US women's liberation movement point to conventional inaccuracies in its treatment.

Preface

Starting where her previous memoir, Red Dirt: Growing Up Okie (1997) left off, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's Outlaw Woman: A Memoir of the War Years, 1960-1975 begins with a twenty-one-year-old Dunbar-Ortiz fleeing Oklahoma with her then-husband, Jimmy, and chronicles her pivotal role as an activist in the women's liberation movement as well as her development of a fierce antiwar, anticapitalist, anti-imperialist, and antiracist feminist political consciousness.

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. Outlaw Woman: A Memoir of the War Years, 1960-1975

But chaos ensues when the head of the local women's liberation movement gets involved.

FILMCHOICE

Such exclusivity enabled women in many cases to better articulate and analyse how sex roles had affected their identities (Cornell 2000, 1035), and also provided a link to the wider women's liberation movement (Janet 1973, 7).

The man question: men and women's liberation in 1970s Australia

For many Latinas and women under 40, feminism is associated with "bra burners," a misnomer that has become part of the narrative of the women's liberation movement of the '6os and '70s.

Moving Latinas beyond Bella, Betty and bra burning

if women didn't have wombs we'd be fine.," the 79- year- old, who became the national leader for the Women's Liberation movement in America in the 60s and 70s, said.

' Long way to go for Indian feminism'

It first began with the so-called women's liberation movement in which gullible women were brainwashed into believing that they were not respected; that they were not even recognized as being human.

Double Dutch Folly

He includes chapters on the civil rights movement and its legislative victories; student revolt and the counterculture; the War on Poverty; contestations over the Vietnam War in society, media, and government; and the women's liberation movement. This second edition has been updated with material examining the legacies of the 1960s, including the conservative counter-revolution and the culture wars.

And the crooked places made straight; the struggle for social change the 1960s, updated 2d ed

Over the subsequent years I did indeed draw from all of those strands, whether it was from my experience running an elderly health project in approaching aspects of running our office; my background in Jewish studies in compiling an annotated bibliography on American Jewish women's history that found its way into two encyclopedias; my personal remembrances of the women's liberation movement when assisting students researching the Second Wave; or using my newly-minted Library degree to take on the implications of the digital revolution for women's studies teaching and research and consequently for our office publications and services.

From the editors