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Love, power and sisterhood
The new women’s movement in the 1970s by Eva Schmitz, PhD in Sociology

Love, power and sisterhood

The new women’s movement in the 1970s by Eva Schmitz, PhD in Sociology

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"Talk with other women about your situation. You will then discover that your problems are not private but something that you share with many others. That they are created by the society we live in. Learn about discrimination of women and about conditions at your work, in your town, your municipality. What is the situation in day nurseries, how many hospitals offer painless childbirth? Unite with other women and fight the battle together. We are many and everyone is needed in the struggle."

These lines were read by thousands of women and men around Sweden in the early 1970s. The text was shown at an exhibition arranged by the women's group Grupp 8 (Group 8) and held at Moderna Museet in Stockholm in April 1972. The theme of the exhibition called KVINNOR (Women) was production, reproduction and sexism. During one month the exhibition was visited by more than 13,000 people; no previous exhibition had attracted that many visitors.

The exhibition text is a specimen of women's movement rhetoric of that period. Women were encouraged to stop being passive in their role as women and start fighting against the oppression of women in all areas of society. The implied message was that women themselves, whether in their own residential area and/or at their work, should initiate the formation of a women's group.

The women's exhibition became quickly renowned and was highly requested all over the country. In 1972, the exhibition was held in Västerås, Norrköping, Uppsala, Vilhelmina, Köping and other places. In the autumn of 1973 it was held at the libraries of Piteå, Luleå, and Gällivare-Malmberget. 1972 was also the year when ideas and demands from the new women's rebellion were widely spread, which resulted in the formation of new women's groups around Sweden. The new women's movement was characterized by its autonomy and that it was organized by women for women.

Background

The formation of a movement can be understood in terms of a contemporary economical, social and political context but also in view of paradoxical situations that affect people's lives. Throughout history movements were often the product of other movements. The period following the Second World War was characterized by an extensive anti-colonial liberation struggle in Asia, Africa and Central America. At the same time, African-Americans in the US began organizing themselves into a broad civil rights movement in their struggle against racism and for civil rights. Towards the end of the 1960s, the anti-war movement organized and mobilized millions of mainly young people around the world against the US war in Vietnam.

Several women's experiences of organizing or sex discrimination stemmed from these movements. Women's experience in the US of being subject to marginalization and a denial of the fact that women are oppressed in society urged women in the student movement to establish a women's group in 1967. At the end of the 1960s, thousands of women's groups in the US were labelled "Women's Liberation Movement", which inspired and enabled the formation t of women's groups in other parts of the world in the beginning of the 1970s. At the same time, there was a parallel radicalization of labour, beginning with the labour unrest of May 1968 in Paris. In Sweden, the miners' strike in Malmfälten in 1969 initiated an extensive strike wave in the 1970s.

There was an obvious link between the new women's movement and the social, economical and cultural changes that took place during the post-war period. From the perspective of women, this was an extremely paradoxical period, during which mothers of young infants entered the labour market, challenging the predominating view that women first of all were wives and mothers. Employed women were at once accepted and damned.

At the end of the 1960s, about half of the Swedish female employees were working part-time as the child care services were far from completed (1). As an example of this, no more than about 5 percent of the pre-school children attended a day nursery. The fact that women could not decide over their own bodies was another problem. Abortion was prohibited and in mid 1960s many women went to Poland to have an abortion. As these journeys attracted much attention, a commission on abortion was set up in 1965.

A growing number of women reacted against various expressions of discrimination in society and against - in sociologist Helene Streijffert's words - the mental and emotional degradation to which women were exposed. Women's experiences of working life - of being economically independent, of being allowed to develop their knowledge, and, at the same time, being subject to discrimination and harassment - urged them to find new strategies for fighting male domination.

The 1960s was also a period of separation from traditional evaluations of sexuality, women's and men's gender roles, and of the view on the family. The liberal Eva Moberg's essay "Kvinnans villkorliga frigivning" (Women's conditional release) from 1961 brought an impact on the debate on gender. Moberg argues that women were given their freedom on one condition: that they would continue to acknowledge that their main responsibility was to take care of home and children. Some year later, Group 222 was established by some 20 politicians, academics and journalists with equality on the agenda. These, with the historian Christina Florins words, "agents of equality", became, in addition, the vanguard of the future equality work that was initiated by the social democratic government in the 1970s.

The new women's movement emerged then in a period of dramatic change, in the lives of men and women during the rise of political activity in many areas. This created a space for mobilization and collective action, which played a crucial role in the movement's emergence.

The emergence of a new women's movement

A women's group's critique that the debate did not fathom the depths of women's oppression ran in parallel to the debate on gender roles. The women had met at the seminars on gender roles held by Karin Westman in Uppsala in 1967 and 1968 (2), which became a source of inspiration to organize their activities. As the women forming the women's group on 8 May were eight in number, they adopted the name Group 8 (Group 8). Employed women between 30 and 40 years of age were the initiators of this group of whom several had experienced limited opportunities to combine paid work and home labour. The 1968 formation of Group 8 in Stockholm became the basis of the new Swedish women's movement. A new generation of women - from Malmö to Luleå, from Kiruna to Skövde, from Borlänge to Oskarshamn, from Linköping to Gothenburg - joined the movement through street activities that were centred on women's rights. The new movement was far from homogeneous, though Group 8 and similar groups, women's groups like Kvinnogruppen in Luleå, Borlänge and other places, together with Kvinnoligan, Svenska Kvinnors Vänsterförbund, Arbetets Kvinnor, Lesbisk Front, Kvinnocentrum in Gothenburg, Lund and Stockholm, groups at women's centres and for women's culture - all saw themselves as part of this "new" movement. Principal bearers of the new women's movement were women who were in the middle of their education and/or women who worked in some of the many new middle-class professions.

The new women's rebellion brought a radicalization of workers, to enforce humane working conditions and higher wages. Some of these women workers were also, indirectly, inspired by the new women's rebellion. Low-paid women in industry, medical service, with office jobs, or employed in the service industry, began protesting against the oppression related to class or gender. Groups of women immigrants from the 1960s and 1970s began organizing in Internationella Kvinnoföreningen (International Women's Association).

Together with the traditional women's associations, e.g. Fredrika-Bremerförbundet and Socialdemokratiska Kvinnoförbundet (Social Democratic Women in Sweden), the new women's movement began collaborating on issues like day nurseries, the sexual crime commission, and women's unemployment.

Group 8 Stockholm

During the preliminary years of relative seclusion, Group 8 laid a foundation for something which came to be known as the hallmark of the new women's movement: extensive adult education activities and activities centred on particular women's demands and directed towards society.

The Group 8 women rather soon became, to use a concept coined by the sociologists Ron Eyerman and Andrew Jamison (1991), a group of movement intellectuals. They collected material on concrete social issues, provided adult education, and wrote their own bulletins. Basing their analyses of women's oppression and conditions in contemporary capitalist society on historical materialism, they wanted to express a joint, ideological view of society and women's oppression. The policy statement of 1970 reads:

"[O]ne of our most important issues is to draw women's attention to their own oppression and to work, together with the men, for a socialist society, liberated from exploitation and oppression".

Women's struggle was about assuming a perspective oriented towards questions and demands that affected a vast majority of women. The struggle for socialism was considered rather as a long-term strategy.

First public information meeting about Group 8, June 1970

Group 8 decided in June 1970 to go public in order to gauge whether there was any interest in forming a socialist women's movement. The group had increased to 16 members and their ideas and actions that focused not only on part-time work but also on the question of abortion, were conveyed to the public. In the spring of 1970, a number of articles on the new women's rebellion were published in Dagens Nyheter, giving the opportunity to more people to get information about the new women's rebellion and Group 8. These articles were written by women journalists who often sympathized with the new movement's ideas.

Before the first information meeting, the women activists spread leaflets titled "Resist - don't cry! Be happy - attack!" (slogans from the US Women's Liberation) outside women's working places, at hospitals, shops, and at Underground stations. About 130 people came to the meeting, and in the next few years hundreds of women went to see Group 8 Stockholm. Group 8 never had to actively recruit new members - instead, 50, sometimes 17, and, at one occasion 200, women came to the information meetings, which were held on several occasions each year. In 1972, Group 8 Stockholm had increased its number of members from about 16 in June 1970 to 470, organized in 43 local groups. At the same time it was reported in a thematic bulletin that there were hundreds of women who wanted to become members. The significance of joining the women's movement was described by women activists in internal bulletins as "something that, in their experience, had been long awaited", "Group 8, long wanted", and "we must be united, get stronger, form a strategy".

A new women's movement in Sweden was born. In the coming years, women initiated, formed, and joined various women's groups, not only in Stockholm but all around Sweden. While Group 8 was recruiting more and more members, another women's group, Kvinnoligan (the Women's League) was established in Lund, a student city (see more under the section Organizations).

1972 - The first 8 March celebration, the first women's demonstration, women's exhibition and national women's conference

On 8 March, 1972, Group 8 Stockholm and Svenska Kvinnors Vänsterförbund (Left Federation of Swedish Women) celebrated the International Women's Day at Åsö high school in Stockholm. This was the first public 8 March meeting in Sweden. The next day the following lines appeared in Dagens Nyheter:

"A deafening sound was heard when thousands of women lifted their voices to sing women's songs at the biggest women's meeting that Swedes had experienced for decades".

The main slogans were "Work, Day Nurseries, Free Abortion, and International Solidarity". The International Women's Day became after this event one of the most important days for women's groups around the country to organize and mobilize particular women's demands during the 1970s. One month later, on 8 April, Group 8 organized the first protest march for women's rights under the main slogans "Work - Say no to use women as pools of labour", "Day nurseries - Say no to conjecture-determined child care", "Education - Say no to female occupations - Low-wage jobs". A good thousand people went protesting through the streets of Stockholm, to Moderna Museet, where the exhibition of Group 8, "Women", was opened the same day.

Most probably, the events in the spring of 1972 were crucial for the development of the new women's movement. There was a growing influx of members to Group 8 in Stockholm and from the years 1972-73 onwards, several women's groups were established around the country. There was a general feeling that the new women's movement and its ideas were successful. The following contribution, made by the end of 1972 by Ulla Torpe, a member of Group 8, is an account of contemporary history that illustrates this:

"...one thing is for sure: this last year has seen a growing awareness of the oppression of women among Swedes, especially women. You can tell this from the current debate, from mass media, from the growing number of pocket books on the women's question that are about to be published, and from the discussion in general. This development, of course, is not evoked by Group 8 alone - we must also consider the international situation, where women's question now is penetrated rather extensively, which, in its turn, has affected the development in Sweden".

This all culminated in the organization of the first socialist women's conference in November 1972 at Åsö high school in Stockholm. 400 women came from 26 places. The main purpose of the conference was to find out which were the groups around the country, including their concerns and attitudes to a variety of questions. A suggestion to form a national organization was voted down. It was decided, however, that a national internal bulletin should be initiated and that the women's groups were to meet again. The conference terminated with an appeal, calling the members to fight under the slogans

"Fight capitalism's unemployment. Free day nurseries for all children. Reduced working hours with unchanged wages to all. Fight sexual exploitation. Struggle for women's liberation".

The women's conference of 1972 became the foundation for a national women's movement based on women's groups' independent organizations, where the agenda of Group 8, with its fixed demands, became a starting point for political activism. The organization of women's actions was often described, both in Kvinnobulletinen [Women's Bulletin] and in the national internal bulletin. Often, these functioned as sources of inspiration. The groups within Group 8 and sympathizing women's groups held annual conferences up to 1982 (except in 1974), to discuss strategy as well as more specific demands around which they could mobilize their activities. Group 8 did not become a national organization until 1977. A joint policy statement was adopted in 1979.

Women's struggle and women's groups around Sweden

The foundation of a new women's movement was laid. The ideological equipment of Group 8, e.g. the publication of Kvinnobulletinen (from 1971) and the exhibition "Women", provided opportunities for women around Sweden to recruit new members and to illustrate women's oppression. In other words, to spread the word was vital for the emergence of the new women's movement, not only in Sweden but also internationally. Important in this context were also the leftist book cafés that sold new (and reprinted) women's books, Kvinnobulletinen, and other women's journals.

Often, spontaneous initiatives came from individual women, experiencing a profound necessity to form a women's group where they were living. A special event associated with a specific question might also result in the formation of a women's group. In Gothenburg, Group 8 was established by two separate networks of women. A local group from Stockholm was invited to an introductory information meeting in Haga, Gothenburg, on the women's movement which presented, among other things, an exhibition of collage works called "Tjejspel" (girls' acting) - a story about women's lives between 13 and 65 years of age. According to one report of this meeting, large crowds of visitors made it impossible to move around the room. When Kvinnoutställningen (Women's exhibition) from Stockholm was shown at the City Library in May 1972, a couple of hundred interested women joined Group 8 Gothenburg. Women activists were organized in basic groups and various work groups. In the latter groups, actions concerning the situation of day nurseries in Gothenburg, women's situation in the labour market, and the current sexual policy, were prepared and organized.

A branch of Group 8 was established in Piteå in the autumn of 1972 as a result of a public opinion meeting held by parents of small children, against the plans of closing down the departments of obstetrics and gynaecology at the hospital in Piteå in the spring of that year. Together with other local women's organizations they succeeded to stop the hospital from closing down. The struggle to extend child care and women's right to work became the most important demands of Group 8 Piteå, around which they organized their actions in the 1970s.

It was not unusual that a women's group was initiated when women had participated in a TRU adult education (the forerunner of Utbildningsradion - the Swedish Educational Broadcasting Company) or the study circle "Women and work" at ABF (the Workers' Educational Association of Sweden). This was how, e.g., the Women's Group was established - in Kristianstad in 1972, in Borlänge in 1974. The group in Borlänge made their own inquiry in the largest residential area of Borlänge, interviewing women there about their need of work and day care places. For several years they arranged political campaigns and a day nursery extension under labels like "1000 new jobs to women in Borlänge" which were based on their own knowledge of women's interest and needs.

In 1972, some ten women in Linköping initiated a Group 8 study circle, "Women's role in the capitalist society" and formed, some years later, a local Group 8 section. This group included an adult education group that worked with alternative forms of housing. The group worked as opinion formers for the project to make the municipality construct a cooperative housing, which was eventually achieved.

It proved enough in some places that only one woman put an advertisement on a notice board in the local library or in Domus, the department store, with the question "Shall we form a women's group?" This was, for instance, how the Women's group in Luleå was established in 1974, Group 8 in Gävle in 1975, and Group 8 in Hultsfred and Vimmerby in 1974. The group in Vimmerby was for some period in touch with some of the immigrant women from the Middle East living there and together they discussed women's issues.

Borås 1974

In Borås, Group 8 was formed in 1973 by some women who studied at the Swedish School of Library and Information Science. Some of them were formerly organized at Group 8 in Stockholm and Women's League in Lund. Their exhibition on women in Borås, which illustrated working conditions at the textile industry, the situation of immigrant women, sexual exploitation and the day care situation in Borås and was shown in April 1975, had more than 2,000 visitors. The main thread of the women's group activities was the question how to make contact with the local female textile workers. A representative of Beklädnadsförbundet (the Swedish textile workers' association) was invited to tell about women's position in working life and in trade unions. Borås Tidning (the local newspaper) described the big and well-attended meeting with the following words:

"What does it matter if there is a bit of a crowd on a solemn occasion like this? This was probably how people felt when national popular movements swept across the country, stirring up people's interest in ideas like temperance, religion and socialism".

These were some examples of women's groups in the new women's movement. Group 8 came to dominate the women's organization, and there were a total of about 30 groups in the years between 1968 and 1979. The platform provided by Group 8 united these groups. During the same period, about 25 other women's groups were created, as parts of the new women's movement, though deciding to call themselves nothing but Kvinnogruppen (Women's Group) and the name of the place, e.g. Women's Group in Hofors. Arguing that an obligation to decide on the issue of socialism would limit women's opportunities to join a women's group, most of these groups did not include socialism on their platform.

In the first years of the women's movement, issues concerning what the women's movement was going to be like, which women to target with its message, and which claims to make were hotly debated - to the extent of leading, at times, to disunity. One example of this, in Stockholm 1973, was when a local group, in Stockholm 1973, broke up from Group 8 and formed Arbetets Kvinnor (Women at work).

In the mid 1970s, new women's groups were formed that did not participate in the national meetings held by Group 8 but regarded themselves as part of the new women's movement. These groups were Lesbisk Front (Lesbian Front), Kvinnocentrum (Women's Centre - in Gothenburg, Stockholm, Lund, among other places), women's shelters and the culture group Kvinnofolk (Womenfolk). Most of all they recruited new groups of women, though Group 8 activists were active in some of these groups as well (read more under the section Organizations).

Women's movement changes

The so-called national women's movement faded away in the beginning of the 1980s, with Kvinnotribunalen (Women's tribunal) in Gothenburg as the last great mobilization of women activists' particular demands from all the country. The tribunal's background was the escalation of threats against women's rights, for instance the right to abortion; but also a deterioration in child care, the increased awareness of violence against women, and, last but not least, the increase in women's unemployment.

In the beginning of the 1980s, the new women's movement had developed into a great diversity of groups. The liberation movement led by Group 8 was successively abandoned and replaced by a "ripple effect", a term used by the editor of the Norwegian journal KjerringRåd, Birgit Bjerck. There was a breakthrough in the movement for women's shelters and women began organizing in their workplace (e.g. Blåställskvinnor - Overalls women). Some of the women were working for peace; other, autonomous women's groups included in the national federation of Group 8, continued their activities in the initial years of the 1980s. The formation of Forum för kvinnliga forskare (Centre for women researchers) in the beginning of the 1980s established women's struggle in the universities.

Adult education and women's journals

Adult education became women's groups' most common activity. The women asked questions like "What is the origin of women's oppression? Why is domestic work "women's work"? Why are women lower paid than men?" These were burning questions, and seeking their answers.

Women gathered every week in base groups or local groups to formulate answers to these questions. Marxist classics like Engels, Bebel, Lenin, Clara Zetkin and Alexandra Kollontay, and works written by socialist and radical feminists like Juliet Mitchell, Sheila Rowbotham, Kate Millet, Shulamith Firestone, Germaine Greer were read. Discussions started with questions on how a revolutionary women's movement was to be built up, with the book "Kvinnokamp. För en revolutionar kvinnorörelse" (Women's struggle: for a revolutionary women's movement), an anthology edited by Iréne Matthis (member of Group 8) and Dick Urban Vestbro, as theoretical framework. The contributions came primarily from the US and Great Britain, where the debate made most progress. In Sweden, Maud Hägg and Barbro Werkmäster, both of them Group 8 activists, published the books "Frihet, jämlikhet och systerskap" (Liberty, equality and sisterhood) and "Kvinnor och sex" (Women and sexuality).

Studies and discussions provided women activists with explanations regarding the characteristics of women's oppression and some knowledge of women's position in society, which gave reasons for political action. The extensive commitment and activism in the women's groups should be explained also by the experiences of women's unity and solidarity developed by these groups. For most women, participation in a women's group was an altogether new situation that they had not experienced until then: of becoming aware of issues far beyond their horizon before joining the women's group, or of writing a pamphlet or holding a speech of appeal. The anti-hierarchical and anti-authoritarian organization made it possible for all to participate and it was also a precondition for the development of women's solidarity. The autonomy of the base/local group could at the same time become a drag on its own development.

Women activists from all over the country wrote pamphlets, held speeches of appeal, sold Kvinnobulletinen or some other women's magazine outside a workplace or in a residential area, both to young women in schools and to working-class women, and they organized public meetings. Women activists talked to other women (and men) about the new women's ideas at a speed and scale unseen in history. Women activists strove to explain and challenge every aspect of women's oppression in the women's movement's leaflets, slogans, pamphlets, journals, exhibition posters, and theatre plays. This was the beginning of realizing that women's position in society was not given or natural but political, and that it could - and must - be altered.

Two leaflets, one produced by Kvinnoligan and entitled "Vad bråkar de nu om" (What are they arguing about now?), the other "Avslöja Kvinnomyterna" (Reveal the myths about women) by Group 8 Piteå, are expressions of this challenge. With all these tools, at once provocative, powerful and challenging, it was hard to escape some knowledge of the profound oppression of women: how they have been systematically repressed, diminished and dehumanized to fit into their role as wives-mothers-domestic workers.

The interest in women's struggle was also mirrored in the selling of women's journals. The first issue of Kvinnobulletinen was printed in 5,000 copies and was, according to women's activists, easy to sell. Some years later the circulation had reached 15,000 copies. During the first years, Kvinnobulletinen was produced by some local groups in Stockholm and later by a permanent editorial staff.

In Gothenburg, individual women published the journal Kvinnoliv (Women's lives). Its first issue, in 1974, contained articles about women in working life, trade-union problems, women and culture, and women in other countries. There were also several women's groups that made their own journals that highlighted women's situation and problems in their respective geographical area. The first issue of Kvinnor i Borlänge (Women in Borlänge) was sold in 2,500 copies by women activists. For several years, before 8 March, Kvinnor i Luleå was released by the Women's Group in Luleå. Articles were written about actions and questions that dominated the women's group's work from 1975 to the beginning of the 1980s - e.g. on the expansion of day-care places, against the escalating women's unemployment, on the threats against the right to abortion, or against the local porno club.

The women's group in Oskarshamn released Kvinnor i Oskarshamn (Women in Oskarshamn) in 1977, highlighting, for instance, women's situation at a number of workplaces in Oskarshamn. One article was about women's situation at LM Ericsson, where some members of the women's group were working; another article was about the strike at the shipyard in Oskarshamn, where nine women went on strike against sex discrimination.

Kvinnor i Helsingborg (Women in Helsingborg), published by Group 8 in 1977, is another example of women's journals. It treated subjects like the struggle for day care, women's situation in the labour market, and prostitution. In Karlstad, Group 8 published "Kvinnor i Karlstad" (Women in Karlstad) in 1979, while giving away 1 Swedish Krona (of the total 5) per issue to seamstresses at Algots. In Lund, Kvinnocentrum (Women's centre) published the journal Kvinnoröster (Women's voices).

Programmes - Demands - Actions

The women's movement raised different demands in the 1970s, with activists taking action in demonstrations, operations and activities, and/or debate evenings. The purpose was to sensitize a wider audience to women's questions and to present them to the public. There was more focus on some of these questions in the beginning of the 1970s - e.g. on abortion, pain relief in labour, and part-time work - whereas questions of day care, women's situation in working life, and the struggle against sexual exploitation of women were highlighted throughout the 1970s.

Results

The autonomous women's movement, with its diversity of groups, demands and actions, faded away in the first years of the 1980s. After this there was a new period of economic depression and a new ideological discourse. Feminist self-awareness continued to grow, even though the activist movement at large gradually ceased to exist. Women's groups that continued to exist were often transferred to women's centre activities. Some women got involved in Kvinnor för fred (Women for peace); others became participants in Blåställskvinnor (Overalls women), and a comprehensive women's research grew in the universities. The battle came to be fought within the established university departments.

What made the women's movement of the 1970s special was the fact that it was a grassroots movement. It developed and spread very quickly. Women activists' joint manifestations, with demands that challenged women's oppression in society, and their questioning of the traditional, firmly rooted, division of labour between men and women - at home and in workplaces - resulted, for many of those women who began acting on their own initiative, in a stronger self-confidence.

Notes
1. It was above all married Swedish women who worked part-time, particularly within health care, commerce and services. However, women who arrived as labour immigrants in the 1960s worked full-time, especially within industry (P. de los Reyes, 2000).
2. Westman Berg, interested in women's history and women's literature, called for a women's perspective, until then not included in scientific research.

Malmö, June 2009