Women's Liberation at Sixty: 1966-2026

Women’s Liberation at Sixty: 1966-2026

University of London Institute in Paris

1-2 June, 2026

2026 marks the 60th anniversary of the founding of the National Organization for W omen (NOW) in the USA. As a liberal feminist organization, NOW was limited in its scope, but its formation helped to usher in the "wave" of more expansive, radical political activism, theorizing, and social transformation known internationally as the Women’s Liberation Movement.

In the decade that followed, Women’s Liberation Movements (WLMs) emerged and flourished in the USA as well as in many other parts of the world. In some cases, WLMs were borne out of women’s experiences of sexism within the context of progressive political movements for civil rights or workers' rights, radical student movements, anti-war movements, and anti-colonial movements. In many cases, the formation of WLMs was inspired by feminist activism taking place in other parts of the world, and the WLMs, on the whole, were internationalist in scope.WLM activists were engaged in and committed to promoting what bell hooks has since referred to as “revolutionary feminism”; they aimed to “have a radical transformative impact on society” that did not simply manage "sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression” but, rather, intended to eradicate them (hooks [1984] 2015, 30 and [2000] 2015, 1). Consistent with this objective, WLMs developed alternative feminist institutions, such as rape crisis centers and domestic violence shelters, research centers, and museums. They also produced alternative feminist media, including journals like off our backs (USA), Spare Rib (UK), MeJane (Australia), and Cahiers du féminisme (France). WLM feminists were clear and direct about their willingness to deploy militant strategies and tactics in order to change the world, and to accept the risks associated with doing so. “Struggle,” hooks writes, “is rarely safe or pleasurable” ([1984] 2015, 30).

International WLMs did indeed bring about major social transformations. Some of the defining accomplishments of the WLMs include:

• Major wins in reproductive freedoms (increased access to birth control and abortion, criminalization of forced sterilization)

• Increased recognition of sexual and intimate partner violence as structural, rather than interpersonal, issues (and the concomitant development of rape crisis centers and domestic violence shelters)

• Development of consciousness-raising as a radical, transformational political practice and a basis for feminist theorizing

• Expanded political rights and representation in government

• Workplace reform (sexual harassment law, union representation, claims for fair and equitable compensation, and parental leave)

• Educational reform (paving the way for gender, sexuality, and women’s studies as an academic discipline)

Despite these important accomplishments, WLMs were constrained by their own internal contradictions. Not least among these was a hierarchisation of oppressive structures which positioned gender oppression as anterior to questions of race, class, and sexuality. It is in response to this lack of what we now refer to as an intersectional perspective within the WLMs that many foundational theories of women of color feminisms, working-class feminisms, and lesbian feminisms emerged. Moreover, across diverse international contexts, the originary radicalism of WLMs struggled against and in some cases failed to resist liberal and right-wingfeminisms. Finally, in many cases WLMs dissolved before fully achieving their more radical goals.

The organizers of this conference believe that the present moment, in which many of the gains of Women’s Liberation are being challenged, minimized, rolled back, and ridiculed provides an optimal time for critical, international reflection upon and engagement with the contributions, contradictions, limitations, and contemporary import of “Second Wave” feminist theory and activism. Relevant and timely questions to be addressed include but are not limited to:

Which feminist figures and texts seem especially relevant for navigating our current reality?

Are there figures and texts which we ought to abandon?

What resources exist within the theories and practices of the WLM that might be able to address 21st-century feminist challenges, such as:

• the manosphere and incel culture
• the sexual weaponization of technology (i.e., image-based sexual abuse and violations, online sexual harassment)
• the rise and overt misogyny of far-right white nationalist movements and the paradoxical appeal of such movements to women
• aggressive pro-natalism paired with the rolling back of reproductive freedom

Do WLMs afford insight into feminist coalition-building that can facilitate the creation of national, broad-based, politically efficacious, intersectional feminist movements? Can they help us to develop effective and mutually-supportive international coalitions?

Are there resources in WLMs that can strengthen and expand trans-inclusive feminisms and oppose TERFism?

Are there resources in WLMs for bolstering gendered bodily integrity and sexual self-determination? For generating emancipatory feminist sexual ethics?

Does WLM theorizing help us to acknowledge the fact that, as Judith Butler has recently observed, state attacks on trans people and trans identity, gender-affirming care, and reproductive freedom are underpinned by the same heteronormative logic such that these attacks cannot be effectively opposed in isolation?

Does WLM theory and activism help us to think through and implement effective modes of opposition?

Can WLM struggles for abortion rights and access to safe and effective birth control serve as examples for feminist activism aimed at not only protecting reproductive freedom but also promoting reproductive justice more broadly?

Can these struggles help to navigate contexts where reproductive freedom has been curtailed or even eradicated?

Are there resources in WLMs that can help us to better conceptualize and therefore oppose the oppressive effects of imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy in its various contemporary manifestations?

Do contemporary feminists need to adopt (versions of) the aggressive and even militant modes of political action employed by segments within WLMs? What would these look like today?

What can we learn from the failures of the WLMs in ensuring the longevity of a contemporary feminist movement?

How can we ensure that the movement is, from its beginning, an anti-racist, anti-bourgeois,anti-homophobic movement?

How can we ensure that feminism’s radical demands remain central as liberal responses to contemporary crises are more widely distributed through the press and social media algorithms?

Submission guidelines

We invite abstracts from scholars, researchers, writers, and activists working in any discipline as well as nterdisciplinary approaches on topics including but not limited to the above. Advanced graduate and postgraduate students are welcome to apply.

Submissions and presentations should be in English.

All presenters will be allowed a total of 30 minutes: 20 minutes to present their work and ten minutes for Q&A.

Please anonymise your submission by sending two separate documents to [email protected]:

1) An anonymised abstract ONLY of up to 300 words, including a title and four keywords.

The document should be named: Short title_ WLMat60_abstract

(E.g. Women’s Liberation Today_WLMat60_abstract).

2) A separate document with the title of your contribution and author information, including name, affiliation, short bio (100 words), and contact details. The document should be named: Short title_WLMat60_ author information

(E.g. W omen’s Liberation Today_WLMat60_author information).

The deadline for submissions is midnight (Central European Time) on Friday 27th February 2026. Decisions will be conveyed Monday 2nd March. Practical information about travel and lodging will be distributed to conference participants shortly thereafter.

Presenting at this conference will require a registration fee of €80 for those with access to nstitutional funding and €40 for those without access to institutional funding.