Why did Feminism experience a revival in Britain in the late 1960s and 1970s?
By Nathaniel Berkin
Edited by Jaina Debnam and Mark Potter
The Feminist movement was not as strong as it had been pre-1918 due to the Representation
of the People Bill being passed in that year which allowed women over the age of 30 to
vote.[1] There was a drop off after these years, also, due to some leading feminists getting older. Feminism began to go through a revival in the 1960s and 1970s. There are a variety of reasons for this ‘second wave of feminism’ between the 1960s and 1970s, for example, America’s influence over British feminism was huge due to them already partaking in many activist activities, such as the civil rights movement and the Vietnam war struggle. Education had multiple layers in its effect on feminism due to it providing a platform for the movement and in its need for reform due to this generation being the product of the baby boom, meaning there was more intake into universities. The belief that the Suffragettes could have gone further was a motivating factor for the liberation movement. The growing interest in fixing the marriage situation and contraception were also key factors in the reason behind the growth of feminism. There were a multitude of reasons as to why Feminism saw a revival during this period, however the reasons stated above are, I believe, the most prominent and important reasons that the revival took place.
American activism cannot be denied when it comes to the influence it had on British feminists. The sixties were a time of protest for issues like the civil rights movement and the Vietnam war, so many women involved in these movements felt motivated to raise their frustrations with the place of women in society.[2] Due to the culture of activism, along with the members of society who protested for feminism, there was much more media attention on the various protests across the country. American feminists were the first to take part in public displays, for, during the Miss America 1969 contest, there was a demonstration outside the venue as women filled up the trash can with bras, girdles, make up and women’s magazines. It was here from which the famous perception of the women ‘burning their bra’s’ came.[3] This was conducted by the Society for Cutting Up Men (SCUM).[4] SCUM was just one of numerous feminist groups that came together during this period to take an extreme stand for female rights. These radical actions always led to huge media attention; they might not have always been viewed positively by the public at the time but, no matter what, there was always eyes on what the feminists were doing in the late 1960s in America. This means that many British women would have seen the American feminists quite easily due to how much the media published stories on them. Despite it having a negative reception in society at the time due to the nature of the protests, it is clear that women felt reached out to and inspired through these protests, which would have arguably inspired them to help fight the cause and also influence the British feminist movement to have a resurgence during this period; this would be shown afterward as the British feminist movement grew stronger just a few years after America’s did. Former President of America, Jimmy Carter was a huge supporter of the women’s liberation movement and he proved this in mid 1970s when he showed public support of it when he proposed that women be included in the military draft. He then went on to write a book ‘A Call to Action.’[5] The fact that the President of the United States was openly discussing and making his own opinion clear to his own people shows the political impact feminism had in America. This is another reason why the media paid so much attention to the movement, and therefore why Britain were so encapsulated by what the Americans were doing.
Something that was a clear influence on the feminists in Britain of the sixties and seventies
was wanting to finish the job the Suffragettes before them had started. Germaine Greer, a major voice of the second-wave feminism movement, believes the suffragettes did not go far enough due to them not wanting to disrupt the structure of society.[6] She believed that the women of today can bring change much further than the Suffragettes could ever comprehend. This comes with the belief that, once the women obtained the vote in 1918, the weakness at the time in liberal democracy was shown much the same as it was shown in other laws when it comes to equality.[7] Giving the vote to the Black Americans did not lead to equality in society and much the same happened to women of this period as they had the right to vote but were not experiencing equality. The drive to go further for women’s liberation was evidenced by the Women’s Liberation Front (WLF) with their seven demands that they released throughout the seventies. The demands summarised the specific aspects of society they wanted to change; equal pay; equal education; 24-hour nurseries; free contraception and abortion on demand; legal and financial independence for women; the right to their own self-defined sexuality; and an improved domestic abuse support
structure.[8] This shows how they were encountering issues that the Suffragettes had not considered themselves and how these feminists could push liberation even further. This is a clear signal for reasoning behind feminism re-emerging as there were many issues that women could see in the society in which they lived that had never been addressed, so they saw the responsibility as their own to push for these issues to be altered for the right of the women and the idea of ‘unfinished business,’ coupled with the nature of activism during the late 1960s and 1970s means the work, or lack thereof, the suffragettes took part in motivated the women to push their ideology further.
The next two paragraphs will be about two particular grievances the feminists dealt with during this movement in Britain and two that were explained during the WLF’s demands. Education is one of the more intriguing reasons behind the women’s liberation movement in this period. First of all, education was the subject of many young people’s frustrations in this period. Throughout Europe, in 1968 there were protests and campaigns showcasing the need for reform in education, due to the larger desire for higher education amongst young people, and more people going to university in general. This is why education becomes quite interesting for the feminist movement: the university became a platform for women to begin discussing these radical ideas amongst one another. This was shown during the first national women’s conference at Ruskin College, Oxford. This proves how prevalent education was in the liberation movement as the first of many conferences held by women were given their platform to discuss and protest by education. Higher education was not perfect, however, and was one of the feminist’s key arguments to help the liberation. The culture of protest within this period included the need and want for reform of the higher education of the University system.[9] The WLF demands stated exactly that ‘We want to fight for real education,’ which means they did not just want equality to the education men had more access to at the time, but a much better standard of it. [10] Education stands out in the fight for liberation due to the dual role it played for the women as it was both the foundation for the discussions amongst leading feminists and one of the key demands for improvement by British feminists during the 1960s and 1970s.
The other key inclusions in the women’s fight for liberation was the state of marriage, and this idea of a ‘Sexual Revolution.’ These are both closely linked because it relates to the fact that women were disgruntled with the fact that they had no real control over what they chose to do with their body and their lives, and it was dictated by patriarchy as to what their path was destined to be. This ‘Sexual Revolution’ encourages the rights of women to not feel obliged to wait until marriage for intercourse, and an easier route to contraceptive methods and abortion rights. During this period, there were only 340 volunteer-operated family planning association clinics across Britain, and only married women or engaged women who could supply evidence of an impending marriage were allowed to access these forms of contraception.[11] There were also 118 government funded authority clinics, and these were restricted to married women who required contraception on ‘medical grounds.[12] Another issue that caused women to struggle to obtain contraception was that the GPs deemed it to be demeaning work to provide contraception and abortions. Abortions were completely illegal until the Act of 1967, however not being able to obtain one before then furthered the frustrations of the women.[13] These features of the Sexual Revolution provide evidence as to why feminism rose again due to how difficult it was to have control over your own body as a woman in British society.
The other issue similar to the Sexual Revolution is the set-up of marriage and the family for
women during this time. The Labour government of 1945 and society accepted the
conventional wisdom that stable families were the basis of a stable society and necessary to
raise the worryingly low birth rate. This means there was an expectation of the mother to be
the main carer of the household while the father went out to work. The only help the mother
would get with this situation was use of the National Health Service but, domestic work itself
was not able to be assisted by the government, nor could they give wages for housework. This
means the women’s labour was unpaid and unrecognised which is what infuriated feminists.
Anne Oakley made an interesting remark that something that added on to the stress was the
perception that the mothers reasoning behind protesting was because of their relationship with their children, which simply was not the case, as she emphasised that every mother ‘loved their child but resented the situation they were in’ and this would lead to, in some cases, severe depression for mothers as their love for their children was being put into question – which can add another reason as to why women wanted a change.[14] Engels remarked in 1854 that ‘The modern family is founded on the open or disguised domestic slavery of women.’ Many women who were part of the socialist activism would refer to this quote as it shows something that has been part of society for so many years and something the women believed needed to change.[15]
The second wave of feminism experienced its revival thanks to an accumulation of many tired elements of British society that women were simply sick of. The majority of the demands and concerns from the women were not as obvious during the era of the suffragettes. This is, therefore, the most important reason behind its revival in the 1960s and 1970s; they felt motivated to finish the job they felt the Suffragettes started in 1918 as they pushed further than simply gaining the vote; there were many areas left unaddressed by the suffragettes which became very obvious in this era, which therefore these women wanted to deal with. The revival of the late 1960s and early 70s was ground-breaking, and that is due to the variety of problems in society, some more important than others as to why it experienced this revival.
Notes
[1] Harold L. Smith, British Feminism in the Twentieth Century (Aldershot: Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd, 1990), p. 61.
[2] Smith, British Feminism, p. 78.
[3] David Bouchier, The Feminist Challenge, (Somerset: The Macmillan Press Ltd, 1983) p. 83.
[4] Bouchier, Feminist Challenge, p. 102.
[5] Jimmy Carter, A Call to Action, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014) p.159.
[6] Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch, (London: Harper Collins Publishers, 1970) p. 14.
[7] Bouchier, Feminist Challenge, pp. 64.
[8] Women’s Liberation Front, The Seven Demands, (London: Women’s Newspaper, 1978).
[9] Mark Kurlansky, 1968: The Year that Rocked the World, (Great Britain: Johnathan Cape, 2004), pp. 353-7.
[10] WLF, The Four Demands, (Oxford: Women’s Newspaper Issue no. 1, 1971).
[11] Hera Cook, The Long Sexual Revolution: English Women, Sex and Contraception, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) p. 217.
[12] Cook, Long Sexual Revolution, p. 240.
[13] George F. Gilder, Sexual Suicide, (Toronto: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1973) p. 167.
[14] Anne Oakley, ‘Anne Oakley discusses motherhood and depression’, (Sisterhood and After: The Women’s Liberation Oral History Project, British Library, 2012).
[15] Suzanna Rose, Women’s Careers, (USA: Praeger Publishers, 1988) p. 95.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Greer, Germaine, The Female Eunuch. London: Harper Collins Publishers, 1970
Women’s Liberation Front, The Four Demands. Oxford: Women’s Newspaper Issue no. 1,
1971
Women’s Liberation Front, The Seven Demands. London: Women’s Newspaper, 1978
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Bouchier, David, The Feminist Challenge. Somerset: The Macmillan Press Ltd, 1983
Carter, Jimmy, A Call to Action. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014
Cook, Hera, The Long Sexual Revolution: English Women, Sex and Contraception. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2004
F. Gilder, George, F., Sexual Suicide. Toronto: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1973
Kurlansky, Mark, 1968: The Year that Rocked the World. Great Britain: Johnathan Cape,
2004
Oakley, Anne, ‘Anne Oakley discusses motherhood and depression.’ Sisterhood and After:
The Women’s Liberation Oral History Project, British Library, 2012
Rose, Suzanna, Women’s Careers, USA: Praeger Publishers, 1988
Smith, Harold, L. British Feminism in the Twentieth Century. Aldershot: Edward Elgar
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