Second wave feminism began to emerge in about 1968 as masses of women began struggling for ‘liberation’ from patriarchal dominance. It was part of a general upsurge in political activity as the baby boomers reached their teenage years and were keen to use their numbers to
change the world. The year 1968 had seen some confrontations between the state and groups pushing for social revolution. In May of that year there were revolts on the streets of Paris, with groups of students, artists, intellectuals and workers demonstrating against what they saw as a rigidly bureaucratized and conservative society under tight state control and becoming increasingly enslaved to capitalist consumption. From this time a series of New Social Movements (NSMs) took shape in most democratic nations around issues such as the environment, peace, the rights of ethnic groups, and women’s liberation. All of these movements challenged traditional democratic ideas about what issues were appropriate fodder for political decision making. They all brought onto the political agenda new issues relating to selfhood, knowledge production, sexuality and bodies (Seidman, 1994). Feminists made this clear in the early shaping of the demands that they wanted met.
There were a variety of demands made by feminist groups with different ideas and priorities, but there was considerable common ground. From America, to Britain, to Australasia (see for example, Dann, 1985: 6, 10;Tanner, 1970: 109—32;Wandor, 1990: 242—3), what second — wave feminists in the Western world declared they wanted could be summarized as follows: equal pay; equal education and opportunity; twenty-four hour childcare; free access to contraception and abortion. These aims were formulated as a challenge to liberal democratic conceptions of the political which were current around 1970. Some issues such as equal pay and opportunity fitted fairly comfortably within existing liberal attempts to reform society, rather than overthrowing it. Liberals argued that women needed to be treated as individuals who had a right to the same education, job opportunities and payment as men. However, the other demands, as I have summarized them, brought politics into areas which many argue should be matters of private decision making. Of course the state, for all its occasional rhetoric about the sanctity of the family as a haven from public and political life, has had a long history of intervening in how people organize their intimate lives. States formalise marriages, and through the legal system make decisions about those who divorce and their children and property. Through welfare policy the state enforces its decisions about what constitutes a family and what entitlements to state assistance people have. The state provides, does not provide, licences, regulates, subsidizes, or encourages a private market in childcare. The state allows or outlaws contraception and abortion to suit its purposes. Legislation discouraging contraception and abortion would often be tightened when there were concerns about the survival and fitness of the population, and especially when soldiers were wanted (Jamieson, 1998: 44). What this illustrates is that the supposed line between the public and private worlds is one which is often crossed. What then is the public/private division about?