ABSTRACT
The Women’s Liberation Movement seemed to erupt at the end of the 1960s and to bear little resemblance to previous ‘waves’ of publicly visible feminist activity. The media image of the movement was dominated by the ‘bra-burning’—more correctly bradumping-that took place at the Miss America pageant in 1968. (A similar protest against the Miss World competition took place in this country in 1970.) The rhetoric of liberation, which demanded the end to women’s oppression by men, was very different from that of equality used by earlier feminists, who petitioned both to join men’s world of work and public office and to achieve greater recognition for what was accepted as women’s work of housekeeping and child-rearing. The energy and anger of the Women’s Liberation Movement made it a force to be reckoned with while also putting it beyond the pale of respectable pressure group action.
