The National Women's Liberation Conference (or National Women's Liberation Movement Conference) was a United Kingdom initiative organised to bring together activists in the Women's Liberation Movement with the aim of developing a shared political outlook. Ten conferences took place between 1970 and 1978. [1] There was a Welsh conference in 1974 and a Scottish conference in 1977. [2]
During these conferences, the seven demands of the UK Women's Liberation Movement were formulated. These demands were for equal pay, equal educational and job opportunities, free contraception and abortion on demand, free 24-hour nurseries, legal and financial independence for all women, the right to a self defined sexuality and an end to discrimination against lesbians, and freedom for all women from intimidation by the threat or use of violence or sexual coercion regardless of marital status and an end to the laws, assumptions and institutions which perpetuate male dominance and aggression to women. [3]
The first National Women's Liberation Conference was held from 27 February to 1 March 1970, and attracted over 600 women. The first four demands were discussed. [1] The conference was held at Ruskin College, Oxford. It was organised by a group of women who had been participating in the History Workshop seminars including Ruskin students Arielle Aberson and Sally Alexander, and historian Sheila Rowbotham. It was initially planned as an academic conference on women's history but it was decided that a meeting to address the contemporary lives of women was needed. [4] [5] Rowbotham gave the call for papers and historians Anna Davin, Catherine Hall, Juliet Mitchell and others gave papers and spoke. [6]
Attendees included approximately 60 men and 40 children. Male attendees, which included Stuart Hall, ran the child care centre so the women could attend. Jamaican-born youth worker Gerlin Bean was one of the few Black women who attended. In an interview following the conference she said “the problems as women are the same; the problems as black women are different. Very different.” Bean went on to co-found the Brixton Black Women's Group, a key organisation in the UK's Black Women's Movement. [5] The conference organisers had to expand the conference into the Oxford Union because of the high turnout of attendees. Rowbotham stated that the move to the Oxford Union was “poignant considering it was an environment that was meant to produce male orators who would become prime ministers”.
At the final session of the conference, called “Where Are We Going?” facilitated by Lois Graessle, attendees voted unanimously on four demands:
British newspaper The Guardian called the conference the "biggest landmarks in British women's history". [7] The conference and the creche were filmed by Sue Crockford, Tony Wickert and Ellen Adams and they joined this with film from the following International Women’s Day March to create the film, "A Woman's Place". [8]
This was held on 15–17 October 1971. The four demands from the First Conference were agreed. [1]
This was held on 25–26 March 1972. [1]
This was held in November 1972. [1]
This was held on 25–26 March 1973. [1]
This was held in July 1974. The fifth and sixth demands were added. [1]
This was held in Aberystwyth in 1974. [1]
This was held on 25–26 March 1975. [1]
This was held on 23–25 April 1976. [1]
This was held in 1977. [1]
The tenth conference was held from 7 to 13 April 1978 at Ladywood School in Birmingham. More than three thousand women attended. At the plenary session, the seventh demand was added, which combined two campaigns of the Women's Liberation Movement against rape and domestic violence. It read "We demand freedom from intimidation by threat or use of violence or sexual coercion, regardless of martial status, and an end all laws, assumptions and institutions which perpetuate male dominance and men's aggression towards women". [9] The sixth demand was amended so that "the right to a self-defined sexuality" became the preface for the rest of the other demands. [1] It was also agreed that all seven demands would be considered over the next year and any proposals for their amendment would be voted on at the 1978 conference. [9]
There were a number of workshops on Saturday which encouraged small group discussion. On the Sunday, a number of specialist workshops were held on topics such as women in printing, women against fascism and racism, guilt and jealousy, the national abortion campaign, country women and Jewish women. There was live music, including Frankie Armstrong, street theatre on the theme of YBA Wife?, and a disco on the Saturday night. Twenty male volunteers ran the day care, supervising more than a hundred children. [9]
Radical feminism is a perspective within feminism that calls for a radical re-ordering of society in which male supremacy is eliminated in all social and economic contexts, while recognizing that women's experiences are also affected by other social divisions such as in race, class, and sexual orientation. The ideology and movement emerged in the 1960s.
Ruskin College, originally known as Ruskin Hall, Oxford, is part of the University of West London, located in Oxford, England. It is not a college of Oxford University. It is named after the essayist, art and social critic John Ruskin (1819–1900) and specialises in providing educational opportunities for adults with few or no qualifications. Degrees taught at Ruskin were awarded by the Open University. The college planned to merge with Activate Learning from July 2021, but instead was acquired by the University of West London during August 2021.
Women's rights are the rights and entitlements claimed for women and girls worldwide. They formed the basis for the women's rights movement in the 19th century and the feminist movements during the 20th and 21st centuries. In some countries, these rights are institutionalized or supported by law, local custom, and behavior, whereas in others, they are ignored and suppressed. They differ from broader notions of human rights through claims of an inherent historical and traditional bias against the exercise of rights by women and girls, in favor of men and boys.
Reproductive rights are legal rights and freedoms relating to reproduction and reproductive health that vary amongst countries around the world. The World Health Organization defines reproductive rights as follows:
Reproductive rights rest on the recognition of the basic right of all couples and individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number, spacing and timing of their children and to have the information and means to do so, and the right to attain the highest standard of sexual and reproductive health. They also include the right of all to make decisions concerning reproduction free of discrimination, coercion and violence.
As in other countries, feminism in the United Kingdom seeks to establish political, social, and economic equality for women. The history of feminism in Britain dates to the very beginnings of feminism itself, as many of the earliest feminist writers and activists—such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Barbara Bodichon, and Lydia Becker—were British.
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 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.
The National Women's Political Caucus (NWPC), or the Caucus, describes itself as a multi-partisan grassroots organization in the United States dedicated to recruiting, training, and supporting women who seek elected and appointed offices at all levels of government. The Caucus offers training, technical assistance, and advice for political candidates, campaign managers, and trainers, with state and local chapters providing support to candidates running at state and local levels by helping raise money and providing hands-on volunteer assistance.
Sheila Rowbotham is an English socialist feminist theorist and historian.
The National Women's Conference of 1977 was a four-day event during November 18–21, 1977, as organized by the National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year. The conference drew around, 2,000 delegates along with 15,000-20,000 observers in Houston, Texas, United States. The United States Congress approved $5 million in public appropriations for both the state and national conferences as HR 9924, sponsored by Congresswoman Patsy Mink, which Ford signed into law. In 1977 at the start of his presidency, President Jimmy Carter chose a new Commission and appointed Congresswoman Bella Abzug to head it. Numerous events were held over the next two years, culminating in the National Women's Conference.
Women's societal roles in Brazil have been heavily impacted by the patriarchal traditions of Iberian culture, which holds women subordinate to men in familial and community relationships. The Iberian Peninsula, which is made up of Spain, Portugal and Andorra, has traditionally been the cultural and military frontier between Christianity and Islam, developing a strong tradition for military conquest and male dominance. Patriarchal traditions were readily transferred from the Iberian Peninsula to Latin America through the encomienda system that fostered economic dependence among women and indigenous peoples in Brazil. As the largest Roman Catholic nation in the world, religion has also had a significant impact on the perception of women in Brazil, though over the past century the Brazilian government has increasingly broken with the Catholic Church in regard to issues related to reproductive rights.
Reproductive coercion is a collection of behaviors that interfere with decision-making related to reproductive health. These behaviors are meant to maintain power and control related to reproductive health by a current, former, or hopeful intimate or romantic partner, but they can also be perpetrated by parents or in-laws. Coercive behaviors infringe on individuals' reproductive rights and reduce their reproductive autonomy.
Women in England are women who live in or are from England. The A Guide to English Culture and Customs described the English women of the United Kingdom to be "equal to men, and should be treated fairly" and that they do "equal share of (...) household tasks and childcare"; but such description may be different in some "more traditional British families" where each couple may have their "own arrangement". As part of the English culture, social drinking is acceptable for women.
The feminist movement, also known as the women's movement, refers to a series of social movements and political campaigns for radical and liberal reforms on women's issues created by the inequality between men and women. Such issues are women's liberation, reproductive rights, domestic violence, maternity leave, equal pay, women's suffrage, sexual harassment, and sexual violence. The movement's priorities have expanded since its beginning in the 1800s, and vary among nations and communities. Priorities range from opposition to female genital mutilation in one country, to opposition to the glass ceiling in another.
The Revolutionary People's Constitutional Convention (RPCC) was a conference organized by the Black Panther Party (BPP) that was held in Philadelphia from September 4–7, 1970. The goal of the Convention was to draft a new version of the United States Constitution and to unify factions of the radical left in the United States. The RPCC represented one of the largest gatherings of radical activists across movements and issues in the United States. The Convention was attended by a variety of organizations from the Black Power Movement, Asian American Movement, Chicano Movement, American Indian Movement, Anti-war movement, Women's Liberation, and Gay Liberation movements. Estimates of attendance range from 6,000 to 15,000. Attendees convened in workshops to draft declarations of demands related to various issues, which were ultimately intended to be incorporated into a new constitution which would function as the final vision of those movements. The RPCC also signified a shift in BPP focus from black self-defense to a broader revolutionary agenda. While conflicts did arise during the Philadelphia Convention, the conference was ultimately deemed a success by the Panthers. After the Philadelphia conference, attempts were made to reconvene to finalize and ratify the new constitution in Washington, DC a few months later but ultimately failed due to police interference and Panther disorganization.
La Conferencia de Mujeres por la Raza was held in Houston, Texas, between May 28 and May 30 in 1971. The conference marked the first time Chicanas came together within the state from around the country to discuss issues important to feminism and Chicana women. It was considered the first conference of its kind by the Corpus Christi Caller-Times.
The women's liberation movement in Oceania was a feminist movement that started in the late 1960s and continued through the early 1980s. Influenced by the movement which sought to make personal issues political and bring discussion of sexism into the political discourse in the United States and elsewhere, women in Australia and New Zealand began forming WLM groups in 1969 and 1970. Few organisations formed in the Pacific Islands, but both Fiji and Guam had women affiliated with the movement.
This is a Timeline of second-wave feminism, from its beginning in the mid-twentieth century, to the start of Third-wave feminism in the early 1990s.
The women's liberation movement in Europe was a radical feminist movement that started in the late 1960s and continued through the 1970s and in some cases into the early 1980s. Inspired by developments in North America and triggered by the growing presence of women in the labour market, the movement soon gained momentum in Britain and the Scandinavian countries. In addition to improvements in working conditions and equal pay, liberationists fought for complete autonomy for women's bodies including their right to make their own decisions regarding contraception and abortion, and more independence in sexuality.
The Women's liberation movement in North America was part of the feminist movement in the late 1960s and through the 1980s. Derived from the civil rights movement, student movement and anti-war movements, the Women's Liberation Movement took rhetoric from the civil rights idea of liberating victims of discrimination from oppression. They were not interested in reforming existing social structures, but instead were focused on changing the perceptions of women's place in society and the family and women's autonomy. Rejecting hierarchical structure, most groups which formed operated as collectives where all women could participate equally. Typically, groups associated with the Women's Liberation Movement held consciousness-raising meetings where women could voice their concerns and experiences, learning to politicize their issues. To members of the WLM rejecting sexism was the most important objective in eliminating women's status as second-class citizens.
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