Women’s Liberation Movement came to rise during the late 1960s and 1970s with the aim of fighting for equality and freedom from the oppression of women against male supremacy. The movement comprised of advocacy, liberation groups, consciousness raising , protests, feminist theory, groups actions and variety of diverse individuals on behalf of freedom and women. The term arose parallel to other freedom and liberation movements during those times ( Abramovitz, 2017) . The idea of the movement was to rebel against the repressive national government or colonial powers in order to win independence for national groups as well as calling an end to feminist oppression.
From strikes to protest marching, letter-writing campaigns, flour-bombing beauty pageants, die-ins in Downing Street to breaking windows of pornography shops, the campaigns were about issues concerning women’s lives took many forms ( Abramovitz, 2017) . Huge spectacles were created to quiet subversion, legal and illegal actions as the movement employed the methods to make their voices and grievances heard while demanding legislative and social changes.
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Abortion and reproductive rights are one of the rights the movement demanded to be granted to women. In the 70s, abortion was an offence even if done due to medical reasons. Additionally, it was expensive, and poorer women could not have access to medical providers . As a result, there was a lot of backstreet and illegal abortion which were unsafe, and women died due to lack of medical attention ( Rostami-Povey, 2016). Due to the protest, the Infant Life Preservation Act was passed, which allowed abortion up to the 28 th week or if the mother’s life was endangered.
Women’s Liberation Movement campaigned against violence against women. The campaign achieved success on a global level and was recognized by the United Nations General Assembly. The campaign raised awareness of domestic violence against children and women and challenged the division between the perception of the family as a safe institution as well as the private and public life ( Browne, 2016) . Fighting for same payment for work that had value was another campaign the movement fought for. They supported workplace struggles for women at work. They protested in factories such as Ford plant in Dagenham, Fulham, Belfast, and Grunwick film-processing plant. In the end, successful legal claims were granted to them. Black and Asian women’s activism, a part of the Women Liberation Movement protested against the intersection of sexism and racism and the abuse of ‘sus’ law, which black men were targeted and harassed by the police ( Browne, 2016) . Additionally, they also fought for gender oppression, racist immigration laws like the ‘virginity testing’ of African and Asian immigration, and equal civil rights, especially in education.
On the other hand, radical feminism and women’s liberation are considered to be synonymous as they are both concerned with the freedom of social oppression. They were both viewed as a threat to men since they appeared to be taking some form of power and authority from them. However, radical feminism is more concerned with eliminating unfair sex roles ( Mukhopadhyay, 2016). On the other hand, those who opposed the liberal movement; Anti-feminists, viewed feminists as women who aim to eliminate men.
Even though some of the movement’s grievances were addressed, failure to produce a clear program of their grievances was one of the failures of the society. another failure was that they had different opinion and views between what was their right and doing good deeds, which left them in confusions and frustrations. Lastly, they had internal failures such as different class contradiction and lack of accurate theoretical analysis leading to an inability to produce accurate programs to spearhead the internal class struggles. Due to these struggles and failures, the anti-feminists viewed them as a bourgeois movement.
References
Abramovitz, M. (2017). Regulating the lives of women: Social welfare policy from colonial times to the present . Routledge.
Browne, S. (2016). Violence against women. The women’s liberation movement in Scotland . Manchester University Press.
Mukhopadhyay, M. (2016). Mainstreaming gender or “streaming” gender away: feminists marooned in the development business. In The Palgrave Handbook of Gender and Development (pp. 77-91). Palgrave Macmillan, London.
Rostami-Povey, E. (2016). The Women’s Movement in its Historical Context. In Women, Power, and Politics in 21st Century Iran (pp. 33-50). Routledge.
Ward, M. (2017). National liberation movements and the question of women’s liberation: The Irish experience. In Gender and imperialism . Manchester University Press.
