The end of the 60s was the era of the student and peace movements. At universities, students designed hand-outs and wrote resolutions, discussed and demonstrated against the "stink of 1000 years" and against the bourgeois society and for self-determination. Students active in the same organisations made their contribution to the new movement by cooking for their fellow students, typing manuscripts and looking after their children. As the women students attempted to place the unfair distribution of work between the sexes on the agenda they were shouted down by the other students. Their demands were apolitical, the conflict between the sexes an "ancillary conflict", and a problem which would solve itself automatically as soon as the "main conflict" of the class society had been resolved. It came to an éclat. Female students began to organise themselves autonomously into women's committees. They wanted to address their role as woman intensively under the exclusion of male members.

Germany as an example: The birth hour of the new German women's movement is considered by many to be the first "Bundesfrauenkongress" (Federal Women's Congress) in Frankfurt on Main, at which 450 women from 40 women's groups took part. The opening speech stated that: "In history, the privileged have never given up their rights freely. Because of this we demand that: women become a factor of power in open disputes! Women need to organise themselves, because they recognise their own most primeval problems and must learn to represent their own interests.

The women were organised into small groups and refused membership of large associations or parties, because they did not want to develop any rigid power structures. In their aims, approaches and ideas, the feminists were heterogeneous and worked in all areas of society (social, cultural, political, scientific, medical etc.). Although the heart of the movement remained organised independently, individual feminists in state institutions or parties catered for the implementation of many demands and ideas. Several examples of change due to the women's movement:

Everyday Life : The women in the student movement initially lived in shared flats with their fellow male students. As a consequence of the women's movement, they increasingly set up shared flats for women. They were fed up of the endless discussions concerning chaotic kitchens, empty fridges and dirty toilets. They made an attempt at a new form of living together as women. Women wanted to live, travel, discuss and learn with other women.

[Simone de Beauvoir]

It wasn't only students who were seeking new ways of living together. The need to thematise their own position within the family, career and society also grew amongst other women. Numerous self-experience groups were formed in which personal problems - frequently for the first time - were vented and strategies discussed for the political fight and the fight on the domestic front. The discovery that apparently private and individual problems were similar formed a basis for the solidarity in the group and with women in general and allowed the social conditions concerning their situation to be questioned. The sentence "the private is the political" became a leading concept of the women's movement. An important point of relation was literature. Simone de Beauvoir's "The Second Sex", Betty Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique", Kate Millet's "Sexus und Herrschaft", Alice Schwarzer's "Der kleine Unterschied und seine großen Folgen" and the results of research on women and matriarchies were read by many women and also led to the relationship between the sexes up until that time fundamentally being placed in question.

Raising Children: Numerous mothers were included amongst the "feminists of the first hour". They opened day-care facilities for their children and discussed fundamental questions concerning education: they discussed gender-specific role assignments and repression-free educational methods at child-age and the age of "anti-authoritarian education" was led in.. Child care facilities and free schools developed in parallel to the women's movement and were linked to discussions specific to women such as the role of the mother. Discussions were kindled later within the women's movement with regard to the question of children.

The women's protest was also directed against established healthcare. Self-examination was propagated in autonomous women's health centres and a breakthrough made against the diagnosis and therapy monopoly of doctors. Society was named as the cause of so many "women's woes" as they were referred to. Tribunals took place against medicines and methods used by the pharma industry which were damaging to the health and against doctors who were hostile to women. Women stormed beauty contests and demonstrated against the beauty dictate.

Art and Culture: Women's projects sprouted up everywhere: women's centres, publishers, newspapers, bookshops, workshops, bands, theatre groups, cafes, pubs and holiday homes. Women's projects and organisations became networked. Women did not band together for political reasons alone, but spent their leisure time together and simply had fun.

Love and Passion: The student movement was the first to question accepted sexual morals and place it in the political arena. Petit-bourgeois, sexually repressive education was considered to be a cause of the "authoritarian character". For this reason sexual morals contributed to the susceptibility of people to fascism and authoritarian ideologies. Sexual liberation was celebrated as a means for emancipation via which the power, dependence and suppression acted out by other people should be abolished. The introduction of the pill at this time initially liberated women from the pressures of pregnancy and was welcomed euphorically. But the old taboos had also functioned as a protective zone for women and now broke away.
Which made the women even more angry as the realities of the student movement, i.e. sexual availability and adaptation to the wishes of men, caught up with them. They now demanded the "emancipation of female sexuality". Research results at that time refuted psychoanalytical theories concerning the apparent superiority of the vaginal orgasm (which can only be achieved via penetration) and the "penis envy" of women. At the same time the reality of sexuality as it was experienced was discussed, about compulsion and lack of imagination. The penis as the only organ for fulfilling female desire was available for disposal, new roads for female sexuality were discussed and tried out. Some women discovered their love for other women during these years as a result, and lesbians stepped out into the open for the first time as a group.

Work: The economic situation of the woman - particularly the subject of housework as unpaid work for the family and society "done out of love" und underpaid women's work - formed the mainstay of feminist analyses. Unequal payment in typical men's and women's jobs was pilloried. In 1978 in Germany a woman worker sued the company she worked for receiving less pay than her male colleagues for the same work done and won the case. Hundreds followed her. Two waves formed within the international women's movement on the subject of housework:
Die "Unitarists" assume the principle equality of man and woman. On the basis of the principle of equality, the same conditions must apply for men and women, i.e. women must have the same opportunities with regard to work, half of the housework must be carried out by the man and the state and husbands must take up their obligations with regard to raising the children. Unitarists defend themselves against the "myth of the mother". They are strongly represented in Germany and in other countries. That motherhood was criticised as a weakness due to the failure in compatibility between children and job was rejected. Besides this women adapt themselves one-sidedly to the principles and ways of thought of the world of men.
The "Differentialists" assume the principle otherliness of man and woman. They were the ones who demanded pay for housework with such vehemence in the 70's They advocate motherhood and see social-critical potential in the mother-child relationship. Pregnancy, bearing children and raising them were placed in contrast to paid work as an alternative form of work, "mother logic" was declared to be female power, which is something to be supported and protected. The centre of the differentialist approach can be found in Italy. The mystification of traditional role models was criticised as a weakness of this approach. Receiving pay for housework ties women to the home and the family even more. The responsibility of the father and the society for raising children and their value in terms of child socialisation were not examined.

Science: Taking the feminist criticism of science as the starting point, research on women was performed increasingly, and an ever-increasing number of scientific and popular scientific publications launched on the topic of women. Women researched history concerning the achievements of women and placed the half of history unknown up until that point at the disposal of the public. No only of content, but the type of research was placed in question and new forms searched for. University budgets and personnel for women's studies were provided, particularly in the USA. Today gender studies form an indispensable part of research, even when the revolutionisation of the whole of science has not been successful.

Results:

	Family and marriage law was reformed in many countries. Racial discrimination and the unequal treatment of married women partially removed from the civil or Christian tradition and adapted to reality. In Germany for instance this concerned the giving of names (on marrying the family name can be both that of the man or the woman), marriage law (man and woman have equal rights to pursue a career, the model of the "house wife marriage" was dismantled), divorce law (the debt principle was abolished and maintenance fixed for the woman) and custody (the welfare of the child was placed in the foreground).
	The "period solution" for abortions (abortions are exempt from punishment until the twelfth week) was introduced in most countries including the USA, Italy and France. The period solution was successfully defended against conservative powers (for instance in England) in countries where it already existed at the time of the women's movement first starting up. Germany forms an exception. Here the period solution was twice declared as not being conform to the constitution ("Protection of Life" as determined in the constitution) in 1975 and 1995. Today the indication solution applies, i.e. abortion is permitted until the twelfth week under specific circumstances, and the pregnant woman is obliged to seek counselling.
	"Quotations" as a temporary means of aiding women to higher positions of power.
	Laws for the protection of pregnant female employees (job security) were passed.

The influence of the women's movement in all social areas with regard to the way of life of both man and woman was hardly to be overrated, both at the institutional and private level. Many demands have not diminished in currency and are first being implemented on a piecemeal basis today (for instance asylum for women, registered life partnerships for homosexual couples, the punishability of rape in marriages etc.). Even after the fall off in the number of public actions and despite a variety of counter movements, women have gained a new self-confidence as a group, and can no longer be ignored.

[Author: Dorette Wesemann, Edited by: Ragnar Müller]

Today's Activists and the Tasks of the International Women's Movement

[Top of Page]

Subjects:  Human Rights  I  Democracy  I  Parties  I  Examples  I  Europe  I  Globalisation  I  United Nations  I  Sustainability

Methods:    Teaching Politics    II    Peace Education    II    Methods