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THE WOMEN’S LIBERATION MOVEMENT

Linda   Gordon

The young feminists’ protest at the 1968 Miss America contest symbolized women’s enslavement to

beauty by throwing items such as hair curlers, girdles, and a bra into a garbage can. But it was probably
not a ragged bra, for these protesters could afford new ones. The difference between the two bras can
represent both the strength and the weakness of their movement: strength because the protest symbolized a
feminist critique that reached beyond economic discrimination to encompass an entire culture; weakness
because the protesters were largely (though not completely) middle-class women whose own economic
security made it hard for them—although they tried—to create a movement that included less privileged
women.
In that year it seemed there might be two women’s movements, separate and somewhat suspicious of
each other. NOW, founded in 1966, had pulled together labor union, professional, and political women to
mount campaigns for equal opportunity for employed women. Between 1967 and 1969 a younger
generation of women, influenced by the civil rights struggle and the anti–Vietnam War campaign, came
together to form what was soon called the women’s liberation movement. They sought a more holistic
transformation of the society, one that would do away with male dominance in every sphere—in private
as well as public—and would challenge all the older gender patterns. Like all the other radicals of the
New Left, they tended to be somewhat disdainful of their elders for not being militant enough. But this
separation of the feminist generations did not last long, and for many women outside the big cities, the
separation never existed, because the movement quickly became vastly larger and more varied than the
sum of its organizations. By the early 1970s, these women collectively created the largest social
movement in U.S. history.