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  • Gail Chester
    I first got involved in women's liberation in 1970 and stayed very active for the next 20 years, including ten years as a member of the Feminism and Nonviolence Study Group.
    I never gave up on activism or being a radical feminist, but for the following ten years Iconcentrated almost entirely on campaigning in my local com -munity--fighting for childcare provision and against rampantcuts in local authority spend ing. Over that period (roughlythe 1990s) I kept being told that the women's movementwas dead, feminism was passe', and I'd better get used to it.

    Less mass action

    Feminist activism clearly never died. In Britain, a number ofprominent women's groups and organisations, among themWomen in Black, Southall Black Sisters, Justice forWomen, and Forward, kept going and indeed still exist. Inother countries, especially in the global South, feminist activismhas continued even more vigor ously. In Britain there was a def -inite downturn in mass activity and little evidence of youngerwomen getting involved and new initiatives being launched.Apart from Women in Black, there were several importantwomen's-led peace initiatives during the 1990s, such as T ri-dent Ploughshares, but whether they were strictly feminist isdebatable.
        The need for feminism haslikewise never gone away . In 2004, women in Britain stillearned, on average, between 18 and 40% less than men(depending on whether they worked full time or part time,respectively); women still do the vast majority of housework andtake the major responsibility in caring for dependants.
        And I never have got used to the absence of a strong, vibrantWomen's Liberation Move ment, and have taken what steps I can to participate in itsre-emergence.

    Same struggle

    Over the last few years, I have met a lar ge number of youngerradical feminists, many of whom had their feminist con -sciousness raised by being involved in environmental,anti-capitalist, and anti-globalisation activism. I am struck bythe similarities between the struggles we had 30 years agoin our movements and what is happening now. Then as now ,there are significant tensions between accepting the use ofviolence and being committed to nonviolence, and betweenworking within the system and being totally antagonistic to it.
        Above all, I can' t help notic -ing that many younger women have become radicalised as femi -nists through their frustration at trying to work politically along -side the men in their move ments. I wish it wasn't true, buton the whole, it seems that women have learnt much moreabout sexual politics over the last generation than men have.Many of the younger feminists I meet seem more interested inlearning from the experiences of an older generation of activiststhan we ever were. This may be partly because more of us are stillaround in more or less full pos session of our marbles. Y oungerfeminists also seem to be better able than we were to incorporatefun as an intrinsic part of their politics, rather than as an option-al extra, and are much less pro scriptive/judgmental about otherpeople's sexuality.

    A re-flowering movement

    I definitely feel more optimistic about the re-flowering of theWomen's Liberation Movement than I did five years ago, as Isee a variety of initiatives tak ing off that did not seem possi -ble a few years ago. It is hard to pinpoint specific reasons forthis, but here are a few possible ones: the anti-globalisationmovement has provided a milieu within which mass radi -cal activism becomes thinkable again; despite Blairism beingjust another version of Thatch erism, people do seem to haveseen through the lie that "there is no such thing as society"; thespiralling increase in internet use provides relatively easyaccess to information and com munications. Even so, I keephearing from individual women that they feel isolated as femi -nists, and do not know how to contact others.
        So listed below is some infor mation about initiatives that Iknow about. Maybe in coming months, PN can contribute tothe upsur ge by publishing fur ther articles and informationabout feminist activism today.
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