Women's liberation movement
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The women's liberation movement (WLM) was a political alignment of women and feminist intellectualism that 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.
Women's Liberation in the USA
The phrase “Women’s Liberation” was first used in 1964, and appeared in print in 1966. By 1968, although the term Women’s Liberation Front appeared in “Ramparts” it was starting to refer to the whole women’s movement. bra-burning became associated with the movement. One of the most vocal critics of the whole movement has been Bell Hooks, who comments on a lack of voice by the most oppressed within the movement, and their glossing over of race and class, which she says was part of its failure to address "the issues that divided women".
See also
