ABSTRACT
The past several years have seen the growth of a radical Women's Movement. It is widely accepted that this movement has its origins in the New Left. This chapter begins with a brief discussion of the transition from Old to New Left, and shows how changes in the Left during the 1960's led to the alienation of women from the Left as a whole and helped to convince them of the need for an autonomous Women's Movement. The Old Left had just emerged from a period of justifiable paranoia—McCarthyism. The factor that accounts for changes in the Left is the subsequent disillusionment of the Left with the activism directed toward working within the framework of institutions traditionally used by the Left. The New Left received a strong infusion of people upset with their own perceived oppression. Women's Liberation has a similar affinity for the "psychological" and "cultural" sides of revolution.
