ABSTRACT

In the late 1960s and early 1970s there was a significant wave of collective political action by feminists in the developed nations in the aftermath of the youth and counter cultural movements. In America and Europe second wave feminism was in part a response to womens’ experience of the New Left and counterculture which had pursued forms of liberation which had not questioned the normative gender order (Evans 1978). In America and the United Kingdom small consciousness-raising groups proliferated throughout urban areas in multiple locations spanning workplaces, educational establishments and friendship networks.