Episode Details

The opening speeches and presentations from Workers' Liberty forum, "Fifty years of women's liberation": discussing the gains women have made over the last fifty years and the case for socialist feminism. More online meetings at: www.workersliberty.org/c19-online Jill: 00:10 Kelly: 29:10 Why socialist feminism?: https://workersliberty.org/why-soc-fem Women's Fightback #24: https://workersliberty.org/workers-liberty-magazine/latest-issue/publications/womens-fightback/womens-fightback-24-march-2020 One woman has a good idea, she shares it, many people laugh, others smile politely, as two women decide to make it happen. So the first National Women’s Liberation Conference in the UK takes place in Oxford, in 1970. Initially to discuss women’s history, the conference, unknowingly, was about to make a significant contribution to the subject. More than three times the expected size, 600 women came together from around the UK. Sheila Rowbotham (mother of the good idea) said it was at that moment ‘a movement could be said to exist’. The conference focused less on women’s history, largely because so little had been written up at that point, and instead focused more on the position and experience of women in 1970. It voted to adopt four demands: Equal pay; Equal education and opportunity; 24 hour nurseries and; Free contraception and abortion on demand. The Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1970s gave voice, confidence and strength to millions of women. It was an organised expression of a greater period known as Second Wave Feminism.