A Movement Moves . . . Is There a Women's Movement in England

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A Movement Moves . . . Is There a Women’s Movement in England Today?

Kate Nash GOLDSMITHS COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON

ABSTRACT There is a diversity of views among feminists who have been debating whether or not a women’s movement exists in Britain today. In part this is due to the lack of a clear working deﬁnition of social movement. This article uses social movement theory to discuss the ambiguous signs that are taken to indicate either the movement’s continuing existence or its disappearance: the growth of mainstream political organizations; a focus on ‘women’ in cultural production; the ‘micro-politics’ of everyday life (often enacted in the terms of ‘I’m not a feminist but . . .’). The article looks at the history of second-wave feminism in England using the two main schools of social movement theory: the ‘contentious politics’ model focusing on organizations and formal political structures; and the ‘submerged networks’ theory that takes solidarity, conﬂict and challenging dominant cultural codes to be central to social movements.

KEY WORDS challenging codes feminism identity micro-politics political opportunities social movement theory solidarity submerged networks women’s movement

The women’s movement is invariably listed among the new social movements that arose in the 1960s and 1970s. However, in Britain, in contrast to the US, it has rarely been studied as such using social movement theory. The women’s movement has mainly been written about by feminists as ‘movement intellectuals’, who, assuming a broadly feminist audience, put forward a view of the movement that is intended to shape it in some way, to make it more effective (Eyerman and Jamieson, 1991). In recent times debate over the movement has taken a somewhat different turn. Feminists have been debating whether or not a women’s movement still exists, whether it should be revived or not and what form it should take. However, without clear working deﬁnitions of what the women’s movement might be, there is immense scope for confusion and misunderstanding. To what

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extent are feminist conclusions concerning the continuing existence of the women’s movement shaped by implicit deﬁnitions of ‘social movement’? This article sets out to elucidate possible models of the feminist movement, using social movement theory, in order to contribute to this debate.1

SIGNS OF A MOVEMENT?

A recent comprehensive statement of the view that the women’s movement no longer exists in Britain, written for both an academic and a popular audience, is that of Lynne Segal in Why Feminism? Though she does not define ‘social movement’, she confidently states that the women’s movement ‘grew rapidly as a mass movement [from the late 1960s], peaking in the mid-1970s before dissolving as a coherent organization by the end of that decade’ (Segal, 1999: 9). A directly contrary view is that of Rosalind Coward in Sacred Cows. Like Segal, Coward is also a veteran of the 1970s women’s movement and writes for an audience beyond the academy. She takes the view that feminism is extremely powerful in political and social institutions but that there is no longer a women’s movement as such (Coward, 1999). However, she goes further in arguing that there is no need for a women’s movement today. As Coward sees it, feminism is a movement against the power of men over women and in today’s much more ‘uneven and heterogeneous’ society, where it is not clear that women share a position of disadvantage as such, the premise on which it achieved so much is no longer valid. Yet another position is argued by Natasha Walter, a journalist and broadcaster of a younger generation, who agrees with Coward that feminism has grown more powerful and that much has changed but who argues that nevertheless ‘something that looks very like a women’s movement does still exist in Britain [and rightly so]. It is not a mass movement . . . but a large collection of single-issue organizations that press for feminist aims in many different accents’ (Walter, 1998: 44). How is such a divergence of views possible? Clearly there are ideological differences here, even though all these writers would position themselves on the Left. The disagreements are also facilitated by the fact that there are signs of activity that lend themselves to such very different interpretations. These activities have enough in common with the aims and strategies of early second-wave feminism to suggest a possible continuation of the movement in a modified but more mainstream form; they might be taken as indications of its success; or they might be seen as evidence of its cooption and dissolution into mainstream politics and social life (Epstein and Steinberg, 2000). It is even possible to interpret such activities as indicating the mutation of the women’s movement into something hostile to the aims of feminism. This is the argument that 06 knash (jk/d) 11/7/02 1:45 pm Page 313

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Coward makes in Sacred Cows, putting forward the case that the movement has resulted in the demonization of working-class men and that the celebration of the feminine today has more in common with notions of the ‘eternal’ battle of the sexes than with justice for women (Coward, 1999). This article explores the question of whether these activities add up to a social movement or not, using social movement theory to clarify the terms of the debate. One of the most important signs of a women’s movement in England today is the growth of feminist involvement in mainstream political organizations. This growth is well documented (Lovenduski and Randall, 1993: Ch. 5; see also Gelb and Hart, 1999; Lovenduski, 1996). The most obvious is the Labour Party, which introduced women-only short-lists for ‘winnable’ seats in 1990 (though these were later found illegal under sex discrimination law) and set up the Women’s Unit, a special committee to influence policy, when it came to power in 1997. There are also a number of women’s organizations and feminists in voluntary sector organizations that lobby at the national and European level, while women’s groups at the local level have generally gained in strength. Although women are still marginal to the political process, many of the issues that second-wave feminists put on the political agenda are now mainstream. There are, for example, publicly funded campaigns against domestic violence, the difficulties of reconciling childcare and paid work are at least recognized by the major political parties and ‘masculine’ work cultures are under attack in legal cases against sexual harassment. This is not to say that there is always the political will to carry out reform, especially where proposals come into conflict with business interests. Nevertheless, many issues that were practically unheard of in the 1960s and were controversial in the 1970s are now the common currency of political life. The difficulty in interpreting these activities as signs of the continuing existence and relevance of the women’s movement is that they might equally be taken as an indication of cooption into mainstream politics and a neutralization of the radical demands of the women’s movement. From this point of view it is not coincidental that the difficulties of reforming the public/private distinction, the theme that runs through all the activities of second-wave feminism, are proving intractable; what is needed is revolution that can only come from outside the existing political system. In the realm of cultural production, there are also activities that might or might not be taken as indicative of the continuing existence and relevance of the women’s movement. Ideas have always been very important to feminism, and there has undoubtedly been a growth in the production and distribution of feminist ideas in education, not just in women’s studies but also across arts and humanities degrees that now often include units on gender where feminist theory is the dominant paradigm. Again, however, this is ambiguous as an indicator of the 06 knash (jk/d) 11/7/02 1:45 pm Page 314

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continued existence of the women’s movement. On the one hand, it means that a large proportion of students are exposed to questions about issues that have direct relevance to their own lives; in this respect, academic feminism contributes to something like consciousness-raising. On the other hand, this is taking place in the hierarchical and assessment- oriented context of education rather than in informal groups. Further- more, it is a commonly heard argument that feminist theory is now so difficult and obscure that it contributes more to the elitism of university education than it does to political education. Outside the academy, it would seem that popular feminist publishing has declined: Spare Rib – a journal explicitly set up to unite the movement nationally – no longer exists and explicitly feminist titles are less popular than in the 1970s (Segal, 1999: 3). While there are probably more popular works by and about women in the 1990s than ever before, it would be stretching a point to see these as feminist given the ambiguous status of feminist ideas and values in popular culture. A good example of this ambiguity is the way in which Princess Diana was feted as an ideal of both femininity and also feminism in the immediate aftermath of her death. An incredible amount of media coverage and at least two books focused on her status as survivor of and challenger to outdated structures, practices and ideolo- gies of patriarchy (Brunt, 1999; Burchill, 1998; Campbell, 1998). It is plausible to argue that if this is an example of feminism, then it has been trivialized; reduced to the obsession with fashion, celebrities and ephemera that passes for news today. On the other hand, it is difficult to imagine how feminism could be popularized without dealing with whatever the media happens to be obsessed with at any particular moment. From this point of view, the media’s fascination with Diana’s life might actually be taken as a sign of success insofar as it indicates that the movement’s ideas have become part of culture, ‘influencing people’s world views and their individual and collective actions’ as Young (1997: 127) puts it. Of course, ‘individual and collective actions’ suggests more than simply watching the television or reading magazines from a particular ideological perspective; it also suggests acting in such a way as to bring about change. Within a broader definition of culture as ‘signifying practices’, it is also important to look at what Patricia Mann has called ‘micro- politics’. She argues that, as a result of entry into the public sphere in large numbers, ‘women are beginning to demand a redistribution of the dimensions of agency in everyday situations, and are attempting to renegotiate the terms of agency within many concrete social relationships, be they private sexual relationships or public workplace relationships’ (Mann, 1997: 225). She sees contemporary women as taking more interest in their own desires, demanding that men change to accommodate the new roles they are forging for themselves as individuals, and social and economic 06 knash (jk/d) 11/7/02 1:45 pm Page 315

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recognition and reward for those roles. One of the principal platforms of second-wave feminism was changing the desires that tied women to their own oppression (Coward, 1999: 40), so that, insofar as Mann is correct, micro-politics must surely be taken as a sign of the continuing strength of the women’s movement. The difficulty of assessment in this case is, however, very clearly linked to the question of what constitutes a movement. Without a collective articulation of women’s renegotiation of agency, Mann’s ‘micro-politics’ might be read rather differently, as exemplary of individualization and further entrenchment of inequalities where women do not fit the masculine model of the autonomous individual, free from dependants and caring responsibilities (Fox-Genovese, 1991). Alternatively, ‘micro-politics’ may be taken to represent the apoth- eosis of a democratic women’s movement in which each individual woman is empowered to define and express herself as she sees fit. In order to explore whether these activities add up to a social movement or not, existing sociological models of social movements may be useful. Oddly, few sociologists have studied the women’s movement in Britain as a social movement (Byrne, 1996; Gelb and Hart, 1999; Roseneil, 1995). There is, however, an extensive literature on the US women’s movement using concepts and methods developed since the 1970s to study the ‘new social movements’ (e.g. Ferree and Hess, 1995; Ferree and Martin, 1995; Freeman, 1975; Morris and Mueller, 1992; Ryan, 1992; Taylor and Whittier, 1995). These models usefully illuminate some aspects of the women’s movement, though they also neglect features that seem important from histories, biographical accounts and the polemic literature that contributed to the growth of the women’s movement in the 1970s. There is also a good deal of debate in the literature on social movements concerning the relative merits of one model over another (see Della Porta and Diani, 1999). Nevertheless, despite these deficiencies, social movement theory does provide clear working definitions of ‘social movement’ and this is important if feminist debates concerning the status and existence of the women’s movement are to be advanced.

POLITICAL OPPORTUNITY STRUCTURES, ORGANIZATIONS AND THE WOMEN’S MOVEMENT

I begin this exploration with what, on the face of it, looks like the least promising model to illuminate the existence and relevance of the English women’s movement. Although social movements are typically distin- guished from political parties and interest groups in terms of their extra-institutional dimensions, the dominant strand of social movement theory in the US actually focuses on the ways in which organizations and the state contribute to their emergence and development. Resource 06 knash (jk/d) 11/7/02 1:45 pm Page 316

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Mobilization Theory (RMT) has been particularly concerned to explain how a social movement gains members, support and money through the efforts of social movement organizations that minimize the need for actual participation on the part of those who stand to gain from it while maximizing their beneﬁts. This is an attempt to explain why any rational individual would become involved in collective action when anyone in the same social position will share in the movement’s gains regardless of whether they participate or not (see Zald and McCarthy, 1987). The ‘political process’ approach addresses a similar problem in that it tries to understand how it is that social movements emerge at a particular time and place; structures of dissatisfaction and disadvantage, which are practically permanent, do not explain their comparatively rare occurrence. It is argued that changes in political opportunity structures make collective action potentially more rewarding under some conditions, so encourag- ing the formation of social movements. A good deﬁnition of a social movement from the ‘political process’ school is that of Charles Tilly, for whom a social movement is a:

. . . sustained series of interactions between power holders and persons successfully claiming to speak on behalf of a constituency lacking formal representation, in the course of which those persons make publicly visible demands for changes in the distribution or exercise of power, and back those demands with public demonstrations of support. (Tilly, 1984: 306)

Tilly’s deﬁnition captures various important aspects of social movements from this perspective: they are unlike political parties in that they involve networks mobilized outside formal democratic representation; their demands are addressed to state elites; and they involve the formation of collective identity insofar as leaders successfully speak for a group. On the face of it, what we will call the ‘contentious politics’ model of social movements (Tarrow, 1998) looks unlikely to explain the emergence of second-wave feminism in England in the 1960s and 1970s. The over- whelming impression given by accounts of this time is that committed activists were highly suspicious both of the ‘patriarchal’ state and of formal organization (Lovenduski and Randall, 1993: 4; Phillips, 1991: Ch. 5; Stacey and Price, 1981: 180). In Britain there was no overarching organization as there was in the US, where the National Organization for Women mobilized women across many smaller organizations and networks into a formidable political force. In the absence of such a national organization, Joyce Gelb argues that the British movement, like the ‘younger’, more radical branch of the American movement, developed as a proliferation of small, non-hierarchical groups of limited scope that tended to be more concerned with consciousness-raising, lifestyle changes and single issues than with national campaigning. Lobbying took place despite the movement’s hostility towards the state, and was most 06 knash (jk/d) 11/7/02 1:45 pm Page 317

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often carried out in collaboration with the Labour Party and trade union movement, within which women’s interests have been marginal (Gelb, 1989). In Gelb’s view, the lack of autonomous, formal organization and failure to engage with the state has resulted in underdevelopment of the British women’s movement and a relative lack of success in policy terms compared to America. She sees it as a failure of the women’s movement, but also of British politics more generally, arguing that the system is closed, secretive and dominated by party politics in comparison with the US, which is more open and permits more pressure for change. According to Gelb’s account, then, the British political system simply did not provide the opportunities for an effective, autonomous women’s movement (Gelb, 1986). However, in a recent article with Vivian Hart, Gelb argues that in the 1980s and 1990s the British and US women’s movements began to converge. She sees the British women’s movement as having been consolidated and transformed as feminist movements have become less decentralized and anti-elitist. Women are now actively involved in the formal political process to an unprecedented extent: in political parties and across a range of social policy advocacy groups, national and local organizations and state institutions (Gelb and Hart, 1999: 156–7). Gelb and Hart’s thesis is that it is a restriction of political opportunities that has convinced British feminists of the need to organize more formally to act on the state. In their view, increasingly centralized government and privatization made feminists appreciate the power of the state against outsiders and work to be included within it. At the same time, women in organizations have been enabled to mobilize resources to lobby government because of the social and professional advances they have made since the early 1980s (Gelb and Hart, 1999: 159). Gelb’s account of the emergence of the British women’s movement has clearly been inﬂuenced by her privileging of US feminism: both in that she sees it as more effective and also in that she constructs British feminism in contrast to US feminism. Here I want to suggest that this may have led her to exaggerate somewhat the anti-statist aspects of the movement, even if her view of it as ‘anarcho-libertarian’ is typical. It is important to look more closely at changes in the British state in the late 1960s that did provide opportunities, however limited, for a women’s movement and also at the organizations working within formal politics that did foster these opportunities, however insigniﬁcant they may appear beside NOW. Again, this is a very underresearched area. I know of no studies that examine political opportunity structures in relation to British social movements of the 1960s and 1970s, while feminist histories of the postwar period tend to emphasize the weakness of the feminist organizations that were left from the 19th century (Caine, 1997: Ch. 6). However, what 06 knash (jk/d) 11/7/02 1:45 pm Page 318

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suggests that political opportunities played a more important role than has hitherto been recognized in the emergence of second-wave feminism is the relative ease with which equality legislation was passed in the 1960s and 1970s – especially given resistance to it throughout the century (Meehan, 1985). This includes the Equal Pay Act that went through parlia- ment in 1970 and came into force in 1975, the Sex Discrimination Act and the Employment Protection Act, that established statutory maternity rights for the ﬁrst time, both of which were also passed in 1975. Equality legislation was certainly not a direct consequence of the women’s liberation movement. The Equal Pay Act was passed before it was even established – if we take the conventional view that it began with the national conference at Ruskin College in 1970. In fact, according to Rowbotham, the campaign that developed around equal pay legislation provided a stimulus to socialist-feminist groups rather than the other way around (Rowbotham, 1989: 166) – though others see it as no more than a minor contribution to the emergence of the women’s liberation movement (Lovenduski and Randall, 1993: 182). Undoubtedly, equality legislation has been extremely limited in its effects. Arguably, however, acceptance of the principle of sexual equality is itself important, especially since it breaks with the British tradition, which has traditionally had no culture of rights politics (Gelb and Hart, 1999: 166; Meehan, 1985). However, its limitations, which have been extensively analysed, are not the issue here; the question is what the ease with which the legislation was passed indicates about the emergence and form of the second-wave movement. Vicky Randall suggests a number of contingent conditions that facilitated the passage of equality legislation, including requirements for entry into Europe that meant both main political parties supported it, the lobbying of militant trade unionists, especially women, and women’s organizations – including those of the emerging women’s liberation movement that joined forces with older feminist groups – and the commitment of individual women MPs. These conditions were facilitated by the general climate of ‘social reformism’ in the House of Commons (Randall, 1987: 289; see also Lovenduski and Randall, 1993: 180–1; Meehan, 1985). This certainly suggests an opening of political opportunity structures, though Randall’s account is not addressed to this issue. Furthermore, it is likely that without the pressure from women in the trades unions and feminist organizations, who had raised the issue of equal pay throughout the postwar period, these political opportunities would not have arisen in this form (Banks, 1981: 219). If we conclude, then, that political opportunities actually were opening up at this time, we are then led to another question: is it rather that the second-wave movement did not take those opportunities? Certainly, the ideas generated by second-wave feminism were ambivalent towards the state where they 06 knash (jk/d) 11/7/02 1:45 pm Page 319

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were not actually hostile and many groups felt there was little to gain from the use of the law (Barrett, 1980: Ch. 8; Rowbotham, 1989: Ch. 9). Nevertheless, activists in the women’s liberation movement did organize national campaigns for legal rights, most notably the mobilization for free, legal abortion but also against social security regulation that rein- forced women’s dependence on men, on behalf of women subjected to domestic violence and so on. Furthermore, women’s organizations continued to work through formal political channels throughout the 1970s, submitting evidence to political committees and lobbying MPs (Barrett, 1980: 245–6). The ‘contentious politics’ model, then, leads us to ask whether there is not more continuity between what is commonly thought of as the ‘insti- tutionalized’ feminist politics that exists today and the feminist politics of the 1970s than is generally acknowledged. As I have noted, the popular image of the British women’s movement is of small local groups involved in drop-in centres for self-education, the collective provision of nurseries, refuges against domestic violence, rape crisis centres, health centres and so on. The Greenham Common movement of the 1980s perhaps best exemplifies this image (Roseneil, 1995). These aspects of the movement were undoubtedly important in England, and it is likely that they have had a lasting impact on political culture as well as on local authority provision of services. The ‘contentious politics’ model, however, focuses our attention on other aspects of social movement politics. If it is the case that political opportunities were available at the emergence of the English women’s liberation movement – and may even have contributed to that emergence – and if there were existing women’s organizations that might have provided the basis for a more effective national movement, then it is important not to idealize the more revolutionary, ‘anarcho-libertarian’ aspects of feminist politics. This is not the place to speculate about whether more could or should have been achieved in the 1970s through policy-making and legislation. The point is rather to raise questions about the different forms that the women’s movement may take. Prejudice against what is usually categorized as ‘liberal feminism’ may have limited possibilities in the past, and it should not do so in the future. However, the ‘contentious politics’ model is also limited. While it helps us situate ‘liberal-feminism’, it does not address other aspects of feminist politics, including all those activities that are not oriented towards bringing about changes through the state. These include the self-help organizations of the 1970s mentioned earlier as well as activities we have noted as significant in the 1990s: the contestation of popular culture and ‘micro-politics’ especially. Nor is it helpful for understanding the conflicts over identity that have undoubtedly had so much influence on the development of second-wave feminism. Since the ‘contentious politics’ model cannot provide a complete picture of the women’s movement in 06 knash (jk/d) 11/7/02 1:45 pm Page 320

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the 1970s, the questions that can be raised from this perspective concerning comparisons with the 1990s are also limited.

IDENTITY, CHALLENGING CODES AND THE WOMEN’S MOVEMENT

The other main strand of social movement theory is New Social Movement Theory, ﬁrst developed by Alain Touraine and elaborated most successfully by Alberto Melucci through a synthesis with the ‘contentious politics’ model (Melucci, 1989, 1996). The model developed by Melucci is much more consistent with the dominant picture of the British women’s movement that emerges from feminist writings in that it stresses what he calls ‘submerged networks’ that exist outside formal political organizations and institutions and only rarely come to promi- nence in the public sphere. It is a model that is much more concerned with cultural change in the widest sense than with legislation and policy- making. According to Melucci’s deﬁnition,

A movement is the mobilization of a collective actor (i) defined by specific solidarity, (ii) engaged in a conflict with an adversary for the appropriation and control of resources valued by both of them, (iii) and whose action entails a breach of the limits of compatibility of the system within which the action itself takes place. (Melucci, 1996: 29–30)

According to what we will call the ‘submerged networks’ model of social movements, then, there can be no movement without solidarity. This is a good deal stronger than the requirement of the ‘contentious politics’ model, where all that is necessary is successfully speaking for a ‘constituency lacking formal representation’ (see earlier). For Melucci, solidarity involves the construction of collective identity within a speciﬁc ﬁeld of opportunities and constraints. Nor is a movement possible without an adversary. In these respects, the ‘submerged networks’ model raises questions about the construction of identity and difference that are close to, and yet different from, those which have preoccupied feminists in England and elsewhere in recent times. Melucci has, in fact, used social movement theory to analyse the development of the second-wave women’s movement. He differentiates between what he calls ‘feminism’ – those aspects of the women’s politics that we have been dealing with so far in this article, that engage the political system – and ‘the women’s movement’ – which relates to ‘female action and its orientations’ and the production of feminine cultural codes. As he sees it, while the former addresses the political success or failure of equality politics, the latter is engaged in producing meanings for society 06 knash (jk/d) 11/7/02 1:45 pm Page 321

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that disrupt the dominant codes of masculine, rational modernity in which women’s difference cannot be recognized or appreciated. Melucci argues that the recent emphasis on differences between women risks destroying the women’s movement as a specific social actor, reducing it to feminism, to becoming simply one pressure group among others (Melucci, 1996: Ch. 7). Despite Melucci’s commitment to studying the specificities of social movements, however, his analysis of the women’s movement is overgeneralized: national differences are clearly of some importance here. Melucci’s account is most appropriate to the Italian women’s movement, which has been influenced by Luce Irigaray’s writings on sexual difference (Bono and Kemp, 1991). Although the question of ‘equality’ and/or ‘difference’ is generally relevant given liberal-democratic structures, insofar as socialist-feminism rather than radical feminism has dominated the English women’s movement, the celebration of female specificity has not been prominent. Nevertheless, as Rowbotham puts it, the women’s liberation movement of the 1970s rejected emancipation associated with ‘the liberal project of modernizing capitalism and with state socialism’ and ‘aimed instead to transform social relationships as a whole at work and at home’ (Rowbotham, 1996: 13). It is, therefore, not unreasonable to characterize it, using Melucci’s terms, as challenging dominant masculine codes. The ‘challenging codes’ model of social movements encourages us to think about the questions of identity and difference that have troubled feminist theorists for some time now in perhaps more sociological terms than is usual. British feminists have above all been engaged in thinking through differences within the category ‘women’ as it has been written about in feminist theory: first, influenced particularly by black feminists and lesbians, around ‘race’, ethnicity and sexuality; and second, in philo- sophical terms, concerning the instability of the signifier ‘woman’ as such. But we may see these issues in rather a different light if we investigate the distinctions between ‘women’, ‘women’s movement’ and ‘feminism’. ‘Women’ is a collective identity insofar as it is social rather than natural, but it does not imply solidarity, nor collective action, as ‘women’s movement’ does. Does any form of women’s movement necessarily depend on the identity of women or are there other identities around which solidarity has been, and may be, constructed? Perhaps ‘feminist’ is such a term? There would seem to be a prima facie case for thinking that ‘feminist’ was at least as relevant a collective identity in England in the 1970s as ‘women’ and that it was not necessarily less radical. There are numerous accounts of the beginning of the women’s liberation movement in Britain that stress how solidarity was relatively unproblematic in 1970 (Wandor, 1990). Others, however, disagree, arguing that ideological differences were already apparent in the late 1960s (Lovenduski and Randall, 1993: 4). 06 knash (jk/d) 11/7/02 1:45 pm Page 322

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The important point here is that as conflicts within the movement became more entrenched, the usage of ‘feminism’ became more common than ‘women’s liberation’. ‘Feminism’, hyphenated with ‘radical’ or ‘socialist’, seems to have been used as a term to construct solidarity despite conflicts within the movement (Caine, 1997: 264). Nevertheless, it is widely agreed that the solidarity of the women’s liberation movement did break up in 1978 – symbolized by the finality of the last national conference – splitting acrimoniously into socialist, radical and black feminist groups. This is generally linked in feminist theory to the problem of conceptualizing the identity of women. It is argued that the biologically defined identity ‘women’ on the basis of which the women’s liberation movement mobilized is inherently restrictive and exclusionary. It is widely believed that participants in the women’s liberation movement were mainly ‘higher- educated, heterosexual, white women in their mid-20s to 30s’ (Rickford, cited in Phillips, 1987) and that the agenda set by this group was actually not that of all women. In the 1980s and 1990s it was argued rather that feminism could only succeed if it were built on negotiating diversity and establishing coalitions rather than on supposing a ‘natural’ constituency of women to be liberated. In this respect, then, feminism might be taken to be more radical than the women’s movement. The question of who the opponent of feminism might be has, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, received a good deal less attention than that of the feminist subject. The emphasis of the ‘challenging codes’ model of social movements on the adversary as a condition of solidarity is confirmed, however, by the emergence of the women’s liberation movement in England. Mobilization began where women were already networked in New Left politics and grew as a response to what was directly experi- enced as male domination within those political spaces. Although men attended some of the early meetings to discuss women’s liberation, they were soon excluded because it was felt that they would try to dominate there too (Rowbotham, 1983). The solidarity of the women’s liberation movement was established within spaces where women were directly struggling against men as a concrete adversary to gain self-respect and self-determination. Moreover, according to Rowbotham, even though socialist-feminists were not opposed to men theoretically (and one of the major splits with radical feminists came over whether men should ever be allowed to attend meetings), but rather to the abstraction ‘patriarchal- capitalism’, in practical terms it was tacitly assumed that the women’s movement was about getting men to give up power over women (Rowbotham, 1989: 297). As she notes repeatedly throughout her history of the women’s liberation movement, The Past is Before Us, politics simpli- fies theoretical sophistications and insofar as feminists remained united in the 1970s, it seems to have been ‘as women’, ‘for women’ and ‘against men’. 06 knash (jk/d) 11/7/02 1:45 pm Page 323

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It is currently very unfashionable in England to see feminism as opposed to men. Recently, women attempting, as they see it, to reclaim the political identity ‘feminist’ have precisely distanced themselves from what they see as an unnecessary and unpopular aspect of 1970s feminism (Walker, 1995; Walter, 1998; Wilkinson, 1994). It is certainly not the case that feminism must, by definition, be opposed to men. This was not true of the beginning of first-wave feminism, for example, in which women paid tribute to John Stuart Mill and other prominent men in the movement without any sense of contradiction (Delmar, 1986: 27). However, the question that Melucci’s theory raises is ‘if not men, then who?’ and this is worth thinking about from the point of view of both historical and contemporary feminism. Finally, to what extent is it helpful to see English feminism as engaged in breaking the limits of the system within which it finds itself? It is not obvious that this is a necessary condition of a movement’s existence in the same way as solidarity and conflict with an adversary, but it does raise interesting questions insofar as, as we have seen, it is argued that we simply do not live in a world in which men embody patriarchy in the way they once did (Coward, 1999). This may be linked to the success of feminism itself, despite continuing inequalities of pay, opportunities and so on. If social movements are engaged in struggles over naming that directly challenge dominant cultural codes, it may be that social movements are necessarily temporary (Eyerman and Jamieson, 1991: 4). Their success may lie precisely in the way they redefine social actors and situations so that the longer they remain outside the mainstream, the less successful they are. Mary Katzenstein has given some thought to how the women’s movement may have transformed dominant cultural codes. She distin- guishes between what she calls ‘feminist consciousness’ and ‘receptivity to feminist ideas’. In the first case there is full-blown identification with the women’s movement, including feelings of solidarity with women as a group, discontent with women’s lack of power and influence and the belief that gender disparities are illegitimate. In the second case there may actually be a dis-identification with the women’s movement, but there is nevertheless an ‘inchoate rejection of societal discrimination and of the structures that cause women’s subjection’ (Katzenstein, 1987: 8). This is the case of those women, often referred to in feminist literature, who say ‘I’m not a feminist but . . .’ and then articulate a demand or objection that would have been unthinkable without the feminist movement. Although the movement in England, as elsewhere, has not been successful in elim- inating inequalities, arguably it has been very successful in generating resistance of this kind. ‘The trouble with patriarchy’ then becomes still more pronounced. ‘Patriarchy’ has always been a contested term in British feminist thought, 06 knash (jk/d) 11/7/02 1:45 pm Page 324

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criticized as too monolithic to describe the complexities of gender relations: it fails to allow for women’s defiance of men and it suggests that men always oppress women, regardless of other axes along which power may be exercised – ‘race’, ethnicity, class and so on (Barrett, 1980; Rowbotham, 1982). Feminist analyses of contemporary society invariably specify how gender relations intersect with these other dimensions of power and present them as complex, fragmented and contested. In part this is undoubtedly an effect of postmodern theorizing, so that it is a matter of changing understanding of gender relations rather than of changes in social reality itself (Walby, 1992). However, it may be that postmodern theory is itself a response to more complex reality. It may be that the disruptive effects of transformations in political economy and culture that are variously termed ‘post-Fordism’, ‘disorganized capitalism’, ‘late capitalism’ and so on have combined with the effects of feminism to significantly alter the ways in which gender relations are lived in contemporary society. In this respect, although it is notoriously difficult to separate out the effects of feminism from these other transformations, the women’s movement may have contributed to ‘breaking the bounds of the system’ that existed as a form of patriarchy in the 1960s and 1970s. In this case, the current tendency for feminists to refer to ‘patriarchal’ relations rather than to patriarchy as such is not simply the result of theoretical changes. It is also linked to changes in social reality that make ‘patriarchy’ less compelling as a description of gender relations than it was before the spread of ‘receptivity to feminist ideas’.

CONCLUSION

The question of whether or not there is a women’s movement in England today is greatly complicated, then, by how we deﬁne and assess what it is for a social movement to form, endure, change and produce effects. In this article we have looked at the two principal models of social movement theory. I have suggested ways in which they might be used to ask questions about the women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s, while remaining critical of the very different pictures of social movements proposed by each one. The women’s movement has never ﬁtted neatly into either model, even if social movement theory does illuminate aspects of feminist politics that have been marginalized or neglected in feminist histories and feminist theory. I have also suggested ways in which social movement theory might be used to make sense of contemporary signs of feminist activities that may or may not add up to a movement today. According to the ‘contentious politics’ model, it is possible that a new wave of the feminist movement could now be developing. The only addition necessary, given that there are organizations and groups 06 knash (jk/d) 11/7/02 1:45 pm Page 325

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addressing the government on women’s issues, would be protestors prepared to express support for particular measures outside formal political channels. The most obvious example of this type of protest is the demonstration. There were estimated to be 100,000 participants at what is taken to be the biggest demonstration of the British women’s movement, which took place in 1979, protesting against restrictions proposed to the Abortion Act of 1967 (Byrne, 1996: 60). The fact that it was a defensive protest is interesting. Although, as we have seen, it is doubtful whether we can identify a women’s movement in England today that resembles that of the 1970s, it is also difficult to imagine women remaining quiescent if abortion rights were threatened. The point here, however, is that without this dimension of extra-parliamentary activity, from the point of view of this school of social movement theory, women’s organizations will be nothing more than interest groups: they do not, in and of themselves, amount to a social movement. According to the ‘submerged networks’ model of social movements, there is currently a women’s movement insofar as there are self-identified feminists actively engaged in publishing, bookshops, women’s studies centres, women’s refuges and so on. Of course, the numbers are relatively small, but it is far-fetched to describe the women’s movement as ‘mass’ even at its peak. It is very difficult even to estimate how many people are involved in the movement at any one time, given that there is no formal membership. However, according to an estimate made in 1980 – just as the movement was in decline from its peak – there were about 10,000 core activists (Bouchier, 1983: 177). It seems likely that there are at least this many involved in the feminist movement now, though they may be less active than they were in the 1970s. It is possible that a larger and more active movement could grow in the future. As we have seen, this implies simplifications in the realm of practical politics, a taking up of positions that map out an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ which seems a long way from the complexities of postmodern feminist accounts of contemporary society. If movement solidarity depends on such simplifications, this currently seems unlikely on anything but a small-scale. We have also looked at a further possibility, that there is currently a form of politics that is an effect of the women’s movement it has replaced. This is the politics of ‘I’m not a feminist but . . .’, the ‘micro-politics’ of everyday life. This need not be a pessimistic conclusion. Insofar as social structures are maintained in everyday acts, they may be modified or even transformed by small acts of disruption. There is still less reason to despair if ‘micro-politics’ are accompanied, as they are in England now, by formal political activity and the potential for occasional, if defensive, mass mobilization. As we have seen, however, such activities may not amount to a social movement in any precise, sociological sense. A conclusion to this article might be, then, that the question of whether there 06 knash (jk/d) 11/7/02 1:45 pm Page 326

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is a women’s movement in England or not is actually misguided. The ‘micro-politics’ that are undoubtedly the legacy of the women’s movement may be better understood as a social revolution rather than as a new wave of the women’s movement. Insofar as feminists are exercised by the question of whether, and in what form, a women’s movement exists today, it is useful to consider precisely what we mean by the question. Perhaps, however, we should also be willing to consider that there may be vital, active and even revolutionary feminist politics beyond the women’s movement.

NOTES

Thanks to Kirsten Campbell, Alan Scott, Fran Tonkiss and Neil Washbourne for stimulating engagement with the argument presented here and to Judith Ezekiel and Mieke Verloo for interesting and helpful editorial comments. 1. There is a problem here with the naming of the question in terms of geographical scope. As Breitenbach et al. have pointed out, in its typical usage ‘British women’s movement’ actually means ‘English women’s movement’: differences from Scotland are rarely noted. In particular, it is generally agreed that the Scottish movement remained strong throughout the 1980s and 1990s, as did the Scottish left, and it was able to consolidate its institutional influence with constitutional reform in the mid-1990s (Breitenbach et al., 1998; Brown, 1996). Here I use ‘British’ where it is a question of following the usage of writers I am discussing, where it is a question of changes in British state or where it is unnecessary to dis- tinguish the movements in Scotland and England on a particular point.

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Kate Nash is lecturer in sociology at Goldsmiths College. She is author of Universal Difference: Feminism and the Liberal Undecidability of ‘Women’ (London: Macmillan, 1998) and Contemporary Political Sociology: Globalization, Power and Politics (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000) and coeditor (with Alan Scott) of The Blackwell Companion to Political Sociology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001). Address: Department of Sociology, Goldsmiths College, London SE14 6NW, UK. [email: [email protected]]