Changing Orientations and Reappraisal in the 1980s: Abortion, Politics and the Course of Modernity

Abstract

A key question in the field of social movements is, where did the new movements ‘go’ after the 1970s? Nuala Fennell and June Considine speculated in 1981:

Many people feel the question now is, not what has gone wrong with the Women’s Movement, but just how many movements are there? And which of them speaks for the majority of women? Gone, it appears is the comfortable complacency with which most women regarded those groups and individuals involved in the women’s campaign. At a time when we have had a plethora of high level seminars and public meetings on women’s issues, (such activity has in fact not been seen since 1975 International Women’s Year), the groans of discontent from various women indicate that all is not as ideal as it might be. Yet, all the public meetings were packed. Betty Friedan, the mother of Women’s Liberation addressed an audience of 1500 women and men at a Women’s Political Association seminar last December. In November, we heard Ms Lucille Mair of the United Nations and Danish Minister for Culture, Lise Ostegaard, at a Council for the Status of Women weekend. And, this year, around 1000 women packed Liberty Hall for a day of speeches, and discussion at the launching of Status magazine.