Everything seemed to change at once: women’s liberation and the women’s movement(s) from the 1960s

Abstract

This chapter outlines women’s liberation and the women’s movement(s) from the 1960s onwards, in the UK and other countries, with background contextualising history and memoir. It describes the way that the new passionate women’s movements erupted out of the post-World War II period and the social ferment and wide-ranging social movements for liberation at the end of the 1960s. The passion and verve of the women’s liberation movement is described in terms of consciousness raising, patriarchy, collective organising, and ‘the personal is political’. The chapter outlines the development of a dazzling array of groups and actions from the early 1970s on, addressing, for example, abortion, equal pay, education, childcare, sexual freedom, the lesbian movement and social liberation for women. They included campaigns, demonstrations, theatre groups, music, conferences, work with trade unions, books, newsletters, daily transformations and the Seven Demands of the Women’s Liberation Movement. The book addresses the challenges raised by, and the development of, the independent Black women’s movement.