ABSTRACT
This chapter grows out of a series of personal and political reflections on the development of the 'women's movement' and an academic engagement with feminist literature over the last twenty five years. It describes the development of the women's movement, its purposes and social composition, and attempts some analysis of its historical development in relation to its achievements and limitation. The chapter wants to draw attention to how amorphous and ambiguous the concept of movement is, and to demonstrate that competing histories are possible. It traces, however cursorily, some of the developments in feminist theories and relates these to the history. The chapter aims to make connections between the production of feminist theories and the historical decline in the activities of the women's movement. It presents theoretical move as an advance on previously naive and grandiose attempts to theorize women's oppression. The consolidation of academic feminism however does seem to have occurred in a period of relatively low political activism.
