This thesis explores the impact of the Women's Liberation Movement (WLM) in Scotland. Using documentary evidence and oral history interviews from twenty-nine participants this study charts the emergence of the movement, offering details on where it emerged, why it did and what campaigns were undertaken. It will complement other studies conducted on the WLM in various other parts of Britain, including London and Leeds. It argues for a more representative historiography in which material from other places outside of the main women's liberation centres are included, demonstrating that women's liberation was relevant to many women the length and breadth of Britain. This study covers the period of the WLM's early formation through to the supposed end of the movement in 1979. It describes what the membership was like, the movement's development through local women's liberation workshops,. newsletters and conferences and it analyses two of the most important single-issue campaigns for the movement in Scotland: abortion and violence against women. These issues were important in attracting new women to the liberation cause, forming alliances with other sympathetic groups and in educating the wider public on some aspects of seventies feminism. By providing the first full account of the WLM in Scotland, this research argues that by looking at smaller case-studies the chronology of the WLM can be questioned. The research illustrates that there were important links between the movement and other social and political groups. Moreover, in narratives of the WLM the increasing fragmentation of the movement is usually conflated with weakness and decline. Most accounts tend to describe how the decline of the movement in Britain in the late seventies was due to an inability to resolve conflict. This thesis seeks to challenge this point by arguing that fragmentation and a focus on single-issue campaigns was by no means an entirely negative development. It helped to create a diffusion of feminist ideas into wider society and in the Scottish context led to a flourishing of research and literature on women north of the border. In doing so they ensured the continued relevance of women's liberation ideas into the 1980s
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:510647 |
| Date | January 2007 |
| Creators | Browne, Sarah |
| Publisher | University of Dundee |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | https://discovery.dundee.ac.uk/en/studentTheses/d2812397-63dc-4e00-9738-4e679fa4b706 |
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