Women’s Liberation Movement

Women’s liberation was a grassroots feminist movement that began in the late 1960s and lasted through the 1970s. Like other new social movements of the 1960s and 1970s, women’s liberation has been associated with the rise of what is somewhat problematically labeled identity politics. Unlike feminist movements of the early 20th century, which had central organizations and tended to focus on clear objectives, like women’s suffrage, women’s liberation had no formal leaders and no consensus on what its political goals were. Despite this lack of clear objectives or organization, women’s liberation was hugely influential in changing cultural perceptions of women and their capabilities, as well as creating alternative institutions and forms of communal life. This entry provides an overview of the history of women’s liberation’s ...