The Women’s Movement

Abstract

In modern societies, social inequality has produced hierarchical structures that are grounded not only on classifications of class and race but also on biological sex. A social movement known variously as the “women’s movement,” the “women’s liberation movement,” or the “feminist movement” made personal relationships between men and women a central political issue. These movement names are often used interchangeably; however, they have differing meanings in different linguistic contexts. Among the social movements in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the second wave of feminism of the 1960s–1970s, the term “feminist movement” or “mouvement féministe” was commonly used in English- and French-speaking areas, whereas the adjective “feminist” in German implied a connotation of radicalism generally only attributed to the new feminist movement.¹ In most countries, the formation of the new women’s movement was strongly influenced by leftist discourses; second-wave feminists classified their movement as “radical” to distance themselves from first-wave “feminism,” which was seen as a bourgeois idea. In France, West Germany, Switzerland, or Great Britain, radical feminists regarded the traditional women’s organizations with skepticism until at least the second half of the 1970s.