Sociologists and psychologists in the Nordic countries such as Norwegians Erik Grønseth and Per Olav Tiller were early pioneers of men's studies as a research field; Grønseth and Tiller's classic study of father absence in sailor families and its impact on children's personality development in the 1950s is often regarded as the starting point of men's studies in the Nordic countries.
In Anglophone countries, men's studies was formed, largely in response to an emerging men's rights movement, and as such, has been taught in academic settings only since the 1970s.
In contrast to the discipline of masculine psychology, men's
studies programs and courses often include contemporary discussions of
men's rights, feminist theory, queer theory, matriarchy, patriarchy, and more generally, what proponents describe as the social, historical, and cultural influences on the constructions of men. They often discuss the issues surrounding male privilege, seen as evolving into more subtle and covert forms rather than disappearing in the modern era.
It is important to distinguish the specific approach often
defined as Critical Studies on Men. This approach was largely developed
in the anglophone countries from the early 1980s - especially in the
United Kingdom - centred then around the work of Jeff Hearn, David
Morgan and colleagues.
The influence of the approach has spread globally since then. It is
inspired primarily by a range of feminist perspectives (including
socialist and radical) and places emphasis on the need for research and
practice to explicitly challenge men's and boys' sexism.
Although it explores a very broad range of men's practices, it tends to
focus especially on issues related to sexuality and/or men's violences.
Although originally largely rooted in sociology, it has since engaged
with a broad range of other disciplines including social policy, social
work, cultural studies, gender studies, education and law.
In more recent years, Critical Studies on Men research has made
particular use of comparative and/or transnational perspectives.
Like Men's Studies and Masculinity Studies more generally, Critical
Studies on Men has been critiqued for its failure to adequately focus on
the issue of men's relations with children as a key site for the
development of men's oppressive masculinity formations - men's relations
with women and men's relations with other men being the two sites which
are heavily researched by comparison.
Topics
Masculinity
Early men's studies scholars studied social construction of masculinity, which the Australian sociologist Raewyn Connell is best known for.
Connell introduced the concept of hegemonic masculinity,
describing it as a practice that legitimizes men's dominant position in
society and justifies the subordination of the common male population
and women, and other marginalized ways of being a man. Being pervasive
across societies, it results in multiple masculinities,
specifically a hierarchy of masculinities, in which some men do not
experience the same privilege other men do, because of their other marginalized identities. The concept has attracted several criticisms (see Hegemonic masculinity § Criticisms), which led to Connell (and James Messerschmitt)
reformulating areas of hegemonic masculinity. This newer version looks
at the power and social dynamics found in the gender hierarchy, the
geography of masculinity at local, regional, and global levels, social
embodiment, and the dynamics of masculinity, including the complex
interlayering of multiple masculinities.
Connell emphasizes that masculinity is constantly evolving, meaning the
curriculum and research of this field will always change.
Michael Kimmel,
an American sociologist and feminist specializing in gender studies,
has written about manhood in America. According to Kimmel, masculinity
began to be defined and reaffirmed around 19th century America. It
involved proving one's masculine worth as well as providing for one's
family, and thereby also affected the political arena, workplace, family, and society at large. Kimmel posits that the imbibing of masculinity happens to young boys at home, at school and when watching adults interact. Kimmel described the term 'toxic masculinity'
as the male-enacted cultural norms that are harmful to men and society,
because they encourage negative behaviors related to dominance,
aggression and sexuality.
Eric Anderson,
an American sociologist and sexologist specializing in adolescent men's
gender and sexualities, has researched and written about the
relationship between hegemonic masculinity and homophobia.
According to Anderson's empirical research, he found that decreasing
homophobia can lead to more inclusive masculinity because hegemonic
masculinity has limited men's behavior in fear of being perceived as
gay. Kimmel describes this theory as "Inclusive Masculinity Theory".
Cultural expectations
It
has been argued that the cultural expectations of boys and men to be
tough, stoic, aggressive and unemotional are harmful to men's
development because they reduce the range of human emotions being experienced, increase levels of anger and depression and can even result in a shortened life expectancy.
Violence
Research on violence has been a major focus of men's studies. Research focuses on men as both perpetrators and victims of violence, as well as on how to involve men and boys in anti-violence work.
Sexuality
Studying
the relation between masculinity and male sexual shame revealed that
greater endorsement of traditionally masculine values was associated
with increased sexual shame, and which in turn is predictive of depression.
Health
Men's studies scholars have studied aspects of men's health and illness such as premature death and coronary heart disease.
Work and care
Men's
studies is notably concerned with challenging gendered arrangements of
work and care, and the male breadwinner role, and policies are
increasingly targeting men as fathers, as a tool of changing gender
relations.
Organizations
The American Men's Studies Association (AMSA) traces the roots of an organized field of men's studies to the early 1980s and the work of scholars involved in an anti-sexist
organization called the Men's Studies Task Group (MSTG) of the National
Organization for Changing Men (NOCM) which included Martin Acker,
Shepherd Bliss, Harry Brod, Sam Femiano, Martin Fiebert, and Michael Messner.
However, men's studies classes also pre-date NOCM, and a small number
were taught in various colleges across the United States throughout the
1970s. Conferences such as the Men and Masculinity conferences sparked the creation of newsletters and journals, such as the Men's Studies Newsletter (and its successor, Men's Studies Review),
pertaining to the growing field of men's studies. These became prime
resources for those interested in the field, providing news,
bibliographies, and firsthand experiences. Following the newsletters and
journals came the Men's Studies Press, thus moving the academic field of masculinity studies to books.
When NOCM changed its name to the National Organization for Men Against Sexism (NOMAS),
the MSTG became the Men's Studies Association (MSA). The MSA was an
explicitly pro-feminist group, and those who felt this was too
constraining split away several years later to form the American Men's
Studies Association (AMSA), although the NOMAS would not let AMSA become
its own self-governing entity, which led to clashes in ideologies
between the two groups.
Journals
The men and masculinities field includes at least eight focused journals: Culture, Society, and Masculinities, Journal of Men's Studies, Masculinities and Social Change, Masculinities: A Journal of Identity and Culture, Men and Masculinities, New Male Studies, NORMA: International Journal for Masculinity Studies, and Psychology of Men & Masculinity.
Feminist criticism
The field of men's studies has received criticism due to its separative nature from the rest of gender studies.
Some feminists view men's studies only as taking away potential limited funding dedicated for women's studies. Timothy Laurie and Anna Hickey-Moody
insist that "[any] atomisation of masculinity studies as distinct from
gender studies, feminist inquiry or queer studies must be understood as
provisional and hazardous rather than as the result of absolute
differences in the phenomena being investigated or expertise required".
Some feminists also argue that many gender and race studies were
created to discuss the oppression that these race/genders experience.
Since men are the primary oppressor of these, men's studies shouldn't be
included within "oppression" studies because it "risks leveling
structure of power by granting men's studies an equal and complementary
place to women's studies".
In 1989 Joyce E. Canaan and Christine Griffin described their
suspicions of The New Men's Studies (TNMS), saying "Is it a coincidence
that TNMS is being constructed in the present context as a source of
potential research, publishing deals, and (even more) jobs for the
already-well-paid boys holding prestigious positions?" Researchers in transgender studies, including Jack Halberstam, have also questioned the relationship between male biology and gender identity within masculinity studies.
Men's studies scholars have responded to this by explaining the importance of men's studies. Harry Brod,
an American sociologist, explains that the importance of men's studies
is that prior to the emergence of the discipline, feminists had been
looking at the generalization of men, whereas this discipline focuses on
the "study of masculinities and male experiences as specific and
varying social-historical-cultural formations." Connell adds that by having a field for masculinity studies it may help "identify men's interest in change".
The men's liberation movement is a social movement critical of the restraints which society imposes on men. Men's liberation activists are generally sympathetic to feminist standpoints.
The men's liberation movement is not to be confused with different movements such as the men's rights movement
in which some argue that modern feminism has gone too far and
additional attention should be placed on men's rights. The men's
liberation movement stresses the negative aspects of "traditional" masculinity,
whereas the men's rights movement is largely about perceived unequal or
unfair treatment of men by modern institutions because of, or in spite
of, those traits ubiquitous to traditional masculinity. The men's
liberation movement additionally aims to liberate men from stereotypes
and attitudes that prevent them from expressing their emotions in a
healthy manner.
History
The men's liberation movement, as recognized by feminists and gender scholars,
developed mostly among heterosexual, middle-class men in Britain and
North America as a response to the cultural changes of the 1960s and
1970s, including the growth of the feminist movement, counterculture, women's and gay liberation movements, and the sexual revolution. Jack Sawyer published an article titled "On Male Liberation" in Liberation journal in the autumn of 1970, in which he discussed the negative effects of stereotypes of male sex roles. 1971 saw the birth of men's discussion groups across the United States, as well as the formation by Warren Farrell of the National Task Force on the Masculine Mystique within the National Organization for Women.
Robert Lewis and Joseph Pleck sourced the birth of the movement to the
publication of five books on the subject in late 1974 and early 1975,
which was followed by a surge of publications targeted to both lay and
more academic audiences.
The movement led to the formation of conferences, consciousness raising groups, men's centers, and other resources across the United States. The male liberation movement as a single self-conscious liberal feminist
movement dissolved during the late 1970s. By the early 1980s, members
of the male liberation movement had fully split into two entities. The
members who had placed greater emphasis on the 'cost of male gender
roles to men' than the 'cost of male gender roles to women' had formed
the men's rights movement focusing on issues faced by men. The members who saw sexism exclusively as a system of men oppressing women rejected the language of sex roles and created pro-feminist men's organizations focused primarily on addressing sexual violence against women.
Race
Racial
differences have existed within the men's liberation movement which,
despite its best efforts of inclusion, such divisions have on occasion
been problematic. Some feminist scholars in political opposition to the
movement have argued
that racism within American society has emasculated non-white men. For
example, black men are perceived to lack control over their innate
sexual aggression.
Within this ideological framework black men are presented as
hyper-sexual to an animalistic degree and are compared to animals,
predators and beasts because of this. East Asian Americans, however, have been portrayed as unattractive and less masculine.
Gay liberation
Second-wave pro-feminism paid increased attention to issues of sexuality, particularly the relationship between homosexual men and hegemonic masculinity. This shift led to more cooperation between the men's liberation and gay liberation movements. In part this cooperation arose because masculinity was then understood to be a social construction, and as a response to the universalization of "men" seen in previous men's movements.
Organizations
California Men's Gatherings
The California Men's Gatherings (CMG) was created in 1978
by men in the anti-sexist men's movement. Author Margo Adair, who
attended the twelfth gathering in 1987, wrote that she found the
atmosphere strangely different than anything she had previously
experienced. After thinking about it, she realized it was the first
time she had ever felt completely safe among a large group of men, with
few other women. She also noticed that everyone was accepted, and
affection among participants was displayed openly.
CMG organizes three retreats annually, focused on men's issues. Currently, most of the men attending California Men's Gatherings are gay or bisexual.
r/MensLib
MensLib is an online forum on the social media site Reddit.
It is a pro-feminist community and was created as a healthy and safe
space for discussion on how traditional gender roles and masculinity
hurts men.
The National Organization for Men Against Sexism (NOMAS) is a
pro-feminist, gay affirmative men's organization which also enhances
men's lives that began in the 1970s. The 1991 NOMAS national conference
was about building multicultural communities.
The Radical Faeries were organized in California in 1979 by gay
activists wanting to create an alternative to being assimilated into
mainstream men's culture.
The women's liberation movement (WLM) was a political alignment of women and feministintellectualism. 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.
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.
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 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. 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 labor, 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 opposing 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 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. 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 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. 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.
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, as 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 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.
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. 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 principles 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", 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.
The
women's liberation movement featured political activities such as a
march demanding legal equality for women in the United States (26 August
1970)
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
US 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.
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 Lee Hyo-jae a professor at Ewha Woman's 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.
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 labor 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.
Reacting on two killings of women in the streets, on 1 March 1977
women in West Berlin started demonstrating at night – later to be
repeated as Walpurgis Night every year on May Day eve. Women in England, Scotland and Wales took up the idea of 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 of 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 the 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 bypassing 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 [fr] (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, The Female Eunuch (Paladin, 1970) by Germaine Greer 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 [sv] (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 freedom 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.
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 sheltersand 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.
Surveillance
The FBI kept records on numerous participants in the WLM as well as 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. 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.
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.
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, 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.
Boëthius, Maria-Pia (1976). Skylla sig sjalv: en bok om våldtäkt [Self-blame: A book of rape] (in Swedish). Stockholm, Sweden: Liber Förlag. OCLC480560113.
Firestone, Shulamith; Koedt, Anne, eds. (1968). Notes From the First Year. New York, New York: New York Radical Women. OCLC28655057. Retrieved 27 May 2018.
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. ISBN978-9-170-54075-2.
Koedt, Anne (1968). The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm. Adelaide, South Australia: Women's Liberation Movement of Adelaide. OCLC741539766. In 1970 editions were released in London and Boston.
Vinder, K. (pseud.) (1975). Kvinde kend din krop: En håndbog [Woman know your body: A handbook] (in Danish). Copenhagen, Denmark: Tiderne Skifter. ISBN978-8-779-736-252.
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 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. "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 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.
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.
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