Radical Feminism

Abstract

Radical feminism arose in the US, Canada, and Britain out of young women's experiences within the civil rights, New Left, and anti‐war movements of the 1960s. Drawing on De Beauvoir's concept of “sex‐class” from The Second Sex (1952), radical feminism – emerging from what was known in the late 1960s as the women's liberation movement – developed an analysis of women's inequality at the social structural level and was a revolutionary (as opposed to reformist) movement that called for fundamental institutional and cultural changes in society. There were three key beliefs guiding radical feminist analysis and activism. First and foremost, radical feminism argued that gender was the primary oppression all women face in society. Second, it asserted that women were, either essentially or due to social construction, fundamentally different from men. Third, it held that social institutions and norms rely on women's subordination, and consequently are constructed to maintain and perpetuate gender inequality in all aspects of life, including around deeply personal facets like sexuality and reproduction.