In very general terms, feminism is a set of political and theoretical movements that fight for the vindication of women (and other historically subordinated identities) that has a history of many centuries, and that has gone through very diverse stages and transformations.

That is why it is usually divided into theoretical currents, which do not mean the end of one and the beginning of the other, but rather, as different experiences and denunciations of contexts of vulnerability have been incorporated over time, feminism has been updating the struggles and theoretical nuances.

After the “First Wave” of feminism (also known as Suffragist Feminism), which advocated equal rights, feminists focused attention on how our identity is constructed based on the social relations we establish, especially through the distinction between public and private space.

The proposal at this time is that women’s demands have to do with our incorporation into public life, as well as promoting legal equality. This current is called Liberal Feminism .

What is and where does Liberal Feminism come from?

The 1960s and 1970s, mainly in the United States and Europe, saw the emergence of feminist mobilizations related to the New Left and African-American civil rights movements .

In this context, women were able to make visible their experiences of sexism and the need to organize themselves, to share these experiences and to seek strategies for claiming their rights. For example, feminist organizations such as NOW (National Women’s Organization) emerged, promoted by one of the key figures in this movement, Betty Friedan.

Likewise, and at a theoretical level, feminists took distance from the most popular paradigms of the moment, generating their own theories that would account for the oppression they were experiencing . Therefore, Liberal Feminism is a political, but also a theoretical and epistemological movement that has been taking place since the second half of the 20th century, mainly in the United States and Europe.

At this stage, feminism appeared publicly as one of the great social movements of the nineteenth century whose repercussions connected with other movements and theoretical currents, such as socialism, since they proposed that the cause of women’s oppression was not biological, but was based on the beginnings of private property and the social logics of production. One of the key antecedents to this is the work of Simone de Beauvoir: the second sex.

Likewise its growth had to do with the development of women’s citizenship , which did not occur in the same way in Europe as in the United States. In the latter, the Second Wave feminist movement called for several social struggles, while in Europe it was more characterized by isolated movements.

In short, the main struggle of Liberal Feminism is to achieve equal opportunities based on a critique of the distinction between public and private space, because historically women have been relegated to private or domestic space, which has meant that we have fewer opportunities in public space, for example, in access to education, health or work.

Betty Friedan: representative author

Betty Friedan is perhaps the most representative figure of Liberal Feminism . Among other things, she described and denounced the situations of oppression that middle-class American women were living, denouncing that they were forced to sacrifice their own life projects, or in equal opportunities as men; which also promotes some differences in the experience of health and illness between one and the other.

In fact, one of her most important works is called “The problem that has no name” (chapter 1 of the book Mysticism of Femininity), where she relates the displacement to the private space and the silenced life of women with the development of those unspecific diseases that medicine does not finish defining and treating.

Thus, it understands that we build our identity in correspondence with social relations and it promotes a personal change of women and a modification of these relations.

In other words, Friedan denounces that the subordination and oppression that we women experience have to do with legal restrictions that limit our access to public space from the start, in the face of which, he offers reformist options, that is, to generate gradual changes in such spaces so that this situation is modified.

Some Criticisms and Limitations of Liberal Feminism

We have seen that Liberal Feminism is characterized by fighting for equal opportunities and women’s dignity. The problem is that it understands “the woman” as a homogeneous group, where equal opportunities will make all women claim our dignity.

Although Liberal Feminism is a necessary movement committed to equal opportunities, it does not question the relationship between this inequality and the social structure, which keeps other experiences of being women hidden.

That is, deals with the problems of white, western, housewives and middle class women , and advocates for equal opportunities in public space, assuming that this struggle will be the one that emancipates all women, without considering that there are differences of class, race, ethnicity or social condition that build different experiences in “being a woman” and with this, different needs and demands.

Hence the “third wave” of feminism, where the multiplicity of identities and ways of being a woman in relation to social structures is recognized. It recognizes that the demands of women and feminisms are not the same in all contexts, among other things because not all contexts give the same opportunities and vulnerabilities to the same people .

Thus, for example, while in Europe there is a struggle to decolonize feminism itself, in Latin America the main struggle is one of survival. These are issues that have led feminism to constantly reinvent itself and to stand up to struggle in accordance with each time and each context.

Bibliographic references:

  • Gandarias, I. & Pujol, J. (2013). From the Others to the No(s)others: encounters, tensions and challenges in the fabric of articulations between collectives of migrated women and local feminists in the Basque Country. JOINTS. Revista Crítica de Ciencias Sociales, 5: 77-91.
  • Perona, A. (2005). Post-war American liberal feminism: Betty Friedan and the re-founding of liberal feminism. Retrieved 16 April 2018. Available at http://files.teoria-feminista.webnode.com.ve/200000007-66cbe67c5a/El%20feminismo%20norteamericano%20de%20postguerra%20Betty%20Friedan%20y%20la%20refundacion%20del%20feminismo%20liberal.pdf
  • Heras, S. (2009). An approach to feminist theories. Universitas. Journal of Philosophy, Law and Politics, 9: 45-82.
  • Velasco, S. (2009). Sex, gender and health: theory and methods for clinical practice and health programs. Minerva: MAdrid
  • Amorós, C. & de Miguel, A. (S/A). Feminist theory: from illustration to globalization. Retrieved April 16. Available at https://www.nodo50.org/mujeresred/IMG/article_PDF/article_a436.pdf