The New Feminism is a cultural, social and psychological phenomenon. Women's Liberation, "the movement," is its visible, articulate and activist manifestation. A look at the organizations, aims, difficulties and range of opinions that help make up Women's Liberation in all its diverse forms:
ORGANIZATIONS. Women's Liberation formally began with the founding in 1966 of the National Organition for Women, which remains the largest and most influential movement group, the original umbrella under which other groups pressed their individual programs. Its membership has doubled to 18,000 in the past year; around 255 chapters now exist in 48 states. N.O.W. has led assaults in Congress and the courts on issues ranging from child care to abortion reform. Growing even faster is the National Women's Political Caucus, aimed at putting more levers of government power into female hands (see following story). There is also the Women's Equity Action League, dedicated to pushing for equality via existing laws and executive orders.
On the local level, the movement flourishes in eclectic profusion. Los Angeles boasts 100 women's groups working on issues as broad as hiring practices and as narrow as do-it-herself auto-repair classes. Washington, D.C., has women's lobbies on Capitol Hill and in other parts of the federal bureaucracy. In New York City and other major urban areas, women's health clinics offer counseling, referral and care free of charge or at nominal fees. Self-help medical techniques, including pelvic examinations and Pap smears to detect uterine cancer, are being devised; male chauvinism, feminists argue, is most humiliating when encountered in an unsympathetic or uncaring doctor.
For all this purposeful activity, the heart of the Women's Liberation movement consists of small groups of women meeting informally to discuss shared problems. Consciousness-raising or rap groups are the recruiting ground of the movement. Says Chicago Feminist Jo Freeman: "The rap group is what the factory was for the workers, the church for the Southern civil rights movement and the campus for the student." Most of the groups are formed, meet for a while and are disbanded, with no one outside the principals—not even organized feminist groups —aware of their existence. Yet it is in the catharsis of consciousness raising that most women find their identification with Women's Liberation.
AIMS. The goals of the movement range from the modest, sensible amelioration of the female condition to extreme and revolutionary visions. The first camp includes the likes of Betty Friedan and emphasizes a more egalitarian society: equal pay for equal work, a nation in which women are not blocked from access to education, political influence and economic power. Items on the immediate agenda: