Introduction

The twentieth century’s second wave of Western feminism has distinguished itself from other social and political movements in several important respects. Its espousal of non-hierarchical approaches to organisation and action have lent themselves particularly well to issue-oriented politics – campaigns around abortion legislation and direct action on peace and disarmament, for example. The movement’s insistence on bringing to centre stage areas of life hitherto considered secondary, even irrelevant, to ‘serious’ politics – the division of labour in the household, relations between men and women at home and in the workplace, emotions, sexuality, even the Unconscious – also sets it apart, giving ground to a conviction that the women’s movement is opening up and beginning to explore a whole new country. In this process, new maps have had to be drawn, concepts constructed, systems of thought developed, in the effort to order the apparent chaos of a neglected other side of patriarchal culture. To take just one example of the effects of all this: trade union campaigns to combat sexual harassment at work would have been inconceivable before the middle or late 1970s, if only because the phenomenon simply did not have a name before that time. One can scarcely organise around a non-existent concept.