The women's movement is invariably listed among the new social movements that arose in the 60s and 70s. However, in Britain, in contrast to the US, it has rarely been studied as such using social movement theory. The women's movement has mainly been written about by feminists as 'movement intellectuals': assuming a broadly feminist audience, they put forward a view of the movement that is intended to shape it in some way, to make it more effective (Eyerman and Jamieson, 1991). In recent times feminist debate over the movement has taken a somewhat different turn. Those who have been or who continue to see themselves as movement intellectuals have been debating whether or not a women's movement still exists, whether it should be revived or not and what form it should take. However, without clear working definitions of what the women's movement might be, there is immense scope for confusion and misunderstanding.
I will argue that it may prove interesting to take a different view of the women's movement, using social movement theory. Rather than the partisan view of the 'movement intellectual', I will take the analytic view of the social theorist. This is not because I think that objectivity is possible, or even desirable, in any straightforward sense. It is rather that to take this viewpoint may provide a position from which to pose questions that would not otherwise be asked and so contribute something to feminist reflection that would not otherwise be possible.
The paper is methodological. The intention is not to reach any substantive conclusions about the existence, or indeed the nature, of the women's movement. It is rather to set out issues that might prove interesting and to ask questions about what the women's movement might be, what it might have been in the past, and what it might be in the future.
A recent comprehensive statement of the view that the women's movement no longer exists in Britain, written for both an academic and a popular audience, is that of Lynne Segal in Why Feminism?. Though she does not define 'social movement', she confidently states that the women's movement 'grew rapidly as a mass movement [from the late 1960s], peaking in the mid-70s before dissolving as a coherent organization by the end of that decade' (Segal 1999: 9). Segal's concern is with the aims and values of the movement and she argues that what is needed is a revival of the socialist-feminist project of the Women's Liberation Movement that aimed to realize collective solutions to problems of dependency that give rise to women's oppression.
A directly contrary view is that of Rosalind Coward in Sacred Cows, who was also a veteran of the 70s women's movement and who also writes for an audience beyond the academy. Coward takes the view that feminism is extremely powerful in political and social institutions even if there is no longer a women's movement as such (Coward 1999). In the new feminism, widely publicized and talked about in the media when it came out, Natasha Walter agrees with the substance of this argument, though she does think that 'something that looks very like a women's movement does still exist in Britain. It is not a mass movement… but a large collection of single-issue organizations that press for feminist aims in many different accents' (Walter 1998: 44). In Coward's view, not only is there no women's movement today, there should not be one. She argues that feminism is a movement against the power of men over women and that in today's much more 'uneven and heterogeneous' society, where it is not clear that women share a position of disadvantage as such, the premise on which it achieved so much is no longer valid.
How is such a divergence of views possible? Clearly there are ideological differences here, even though all these writers would position themselves on the Left. But such wildly different interpretations are also facilitated by the fact that there are signs of activity that lend themselves to such very different interpretations. These activities have enough in common with the aims and strategies of early second-wave feminism to suggest a possible continuation of the movement in a modified form, as Walters argues. Alternatively, depending on how they're interpreted, they may also be seen as indications of the success of the women's movement, as Coward argues and as those who suggest that we now live in a post-feminist society are also implying (Coppock, Haydon and Richter, 1995). These activities may be seen as the co-option of the movement into mainstream politics and social life (Epstein and Steinberg 2000). Or, finally, they may be interpreted as evidence of the mutation of the women's movement into something different and alien, or even hostile to the aims of feminism. Coward makes this argument in Sacred Cows, arguing that the movement has resulted in 'womanism' in contemporary popular culture which demonizes working class men and has more in common with notions of the 'eternal' battle of the sexes than with justice for women (Coward 1999).
One of the most important signs of some form of women's movement is the growth of feminist involvement in mainstream political organizations. This growth is well-documented (Lovenduski and Randall 1993 ch. 5; Lovenduski 1996; Gelb and Hart, 1999). The most obvious is the Labour Party, which introduced women-only short-lists for 'winnable' seats in 1990 (though these were later found illegal under sex discrimination law) and set up a Women's Unit when it came to power in 1997. There are also a number of women's organizations and feminists in voluntary sector organizations that lobby at the national and European level, while women's groups at the local level have generally gained in strength. Although women may still be relatively marginal to the political process, many of the issues that second-wave feminists put on the political agenda are now mainstream. There are, for example, publicly funded campaigns against domestic violence, the difficulties of reconciling childcare and paid work are at least recognised by the major political parties and 'masculine' work cultures are under attack in legal cases against sexual harassment. This is not to say that there is always the political will to carry out reform, especially where proposals come into conflict with business interests. Nevertheless, many issues that were practically unheard of in the 60s and were controversial in the 70s are now the common currency of political life. The difficulty in interpreting these activities as signs of the continuing existence and relevance of the women's movement is that they might equally be taken as an indication of co-option into mainstream politics and a neutralization of the radical demands of the women's movement. On this view, it is not coincidental that the difficulties of reforming the public/private distinction, the theme that runs through all the activities of second-wave feminism are proving intractable; what is needed is revolution that can only come from outside the existing political system.
In the realm of cultural production, there are also activities that might or might not be taken as indicative of the continuing existence and relevance of the women's movement. Academic feminism is thriving, not just in women's studies but also across arts and humanities degrees that now invariably include units on gender where feminist theory is the dominant paradigm. Again, however, this is ambiguous as an indicator of the continued existence of the women's movement. On the one hand, it means that a large proportion of students are exposed to questions about issues which have direct relevance to their own lives; in this respect, academic feminism contributes to something like consciousness-raising. On the other hand, this is taking place in the hierarchical and assessment oriented context of education rather than in informal groups. Furthermore, it is a commonly heard argument that feminist theory is now so difficult and obscure that it contributes more to the elitism of university education than it does to political education. Outside the academy, it would seem that popular feminist publishing has declined: Spare Rib no longer exists and explicitly feminist titles are less popular than in the 70s (Segal 1999: 3). While there are probably more popular works by and about women in the 90s than ever before, it would be stretching a point to see these as feminist. The picture here is not uniformly dismal either, however, and there may be signs of resurgence in feminist publishing. In a number of collections of autobiographical writing published under the rubric 'Third-wave feminism', women write about the complexities of coming of age in a world where feminism is a public discourse as well as an identity and where differences and compromises have replaced what they see as the absolutes of the second-wave (Findlen, 1995; Walker, 1995; Walter, 1999). Whether this project will meet with any success in mobilizing young women remains to be seen. There is also the question of the ambiguous status of feminist ideas and values in popular culture. A good example is the way in which Princess Diana was feted as an ideal of both femininity and also feminism in the immediate aftermath of her death. An incredible amount of media coverage and at least two books focussed on her status as survivor of and challenger to out-dated structures, practices and ideologies of patriarchy (Burchill 1998; Campbell 1998; Brunt 1999). It is possible to argue plausibly that if this is an example of feminism, then it has been trivialized; reduced to the obsession with fashion, celebrities and ephemera that passes for news today. On the other hand, it is difficult to imagine how feminism could be popularized without dealing with whatever popular culture happens to be obsessed with at any particular moment. From this point of view, the media's fascination with Diana's life might actually be taken as a sign of success insofar as indicates that 'the [women's] movement's ideas [have] become an integral part of [the] culture, influencing people's world views and their individual and collective actions.' (Young, 1997: 127)
Of course, 'individual and collective actions' suggests more than simply watching the TV or reading magazines from a particular perspective; it also suggests acting in such a way as to bring about change. Within a broader definition of culture as 'signifying practices', it is also important to look at what Patricia Mann has called 'micro-politics'. She argues that, as a result of entry into the public sphere in large numbers, 'women are beginning to demand a redistribution of the dimensions of agency in everyday situations, and are attempting to renegotiate the terms of agency within many concrete social relationships, be they private sexual relationships or public workplace relationships.' (Mann 1997: 225). She sees contemporary women as taking more interest in their own desires, demanding that men change to accommodate the new roles they are forging for themselves as individuals and demanding too social and economic recognition and reward for those roles. One of the principal platforms of second-wave feminism was changing the desires that tied women to their own oppression (Coward 1999: 40), so that, insofar as Mann is correct, micro-politics must surely be taken as a sign of the continuing strength of the women's movement. The difficulty of assessment in this case is, however, very clearly linked to the question of what constitutes a movement. Without a collective articulation of women's re-negotiation of agency, Mann's 'micro-politics' might be read rather differently, as exemplary of individualization and further entrenchment of inequalities where women do not fit the masculine model of the autonomous individual, free from dependents and caring responsibilities (Fox-Genovese, 1991). Alternatively, 'micro-politics' may be taken to represent the apotheosis of a democratic women's movement in which each individual woman is empowered to define and express herself as she sees fit.
What I want to do in this paper is to explore how we might begin to think about whether these activities actually add up to a social movement or not. In order to do so, I am suggesting that existing models of social movements as they have been developed in sociology are useful. This is not, of course, to suppose that social movement theory has all the answers. On the contrary, in some respects it is evident that these models do not fit the women's movement well. As I noted earlier, with very few exceptions, few sociologists have studied the women's movement in Britain as a social movement (Roseneil 1995; Byrne 1996; Gelb and Hart 1999). There is, however, an extensive literature on the US women's movement using concepts and methods developed since the 70s to study the 'new social movements' (eg Freeman 1975, Max Ferree and Hess 1985, Ryan, 1992, Taylor and Whittier 1995). These models do usefully illuminate some aspects of the women's movement, including some that are not addressed by 'movement intellectuals'. However, they also neglect features that seem important from histories, biographical accounts and polemic literature that contributed to the growth of the women's movement in the 70s. There is a good deal of debate in the literature on social movements concerning the relative merits of one model over another (see Della Porta and Diani 1999 ch. 4; Nash 2000 ch. 3). Nevertheless, despite these deficiencies - or perhaps because of them, insofar as this area of study is far from closed - these models do provide clear working definitions of 'social movement' and this is important if feminist debates concerning the status and existence of the women's movement are to be advanced. Social movement theory need not be seen as closing down questions, but rather as opening up new areas of investigation for feminist research.
I'll begin this exploration with what, on the face of it, looks like the least promising model to illuminate the existence and relevance of the British women's movement. Although social movements are typically distinguished from political parties and interest groups in terms of their extra-institutional dimensions, the dominant strand of social movement theory in the US actually focuses on the ways in which organizations and the state contribute to their emergence and development. Resource Mobilization Theory (RMT) has been particularly concerned to explain how social movements gain members, support and money through the efforts of social movement organizations that minimize the need for actual participation on the part of those who stand to gain from it whilst maximising their benefits. This is an attempt to explain why any rational individual would become involved in collective action when anyone in the same social position will share in the movement's gains regardless of whether they participate or not (see Zald and McCarthy 1987). The 'political process' approach addresses a similar problem in that it tries to understand how it is that social movements emerge at a particular time and place; structures of dissatisfaction and disadvantage, which are practically permanent, do not explain their comparatively rare occurrence. It is argued that changes in political opportunity structures make collective action potentially more rewarding under some conditions, so encouraging the formation of social movements. A good definition of a social movement from the 'political process' school is that of Charles Tilly, for whom a social movement is a:
'sustained series of interactions between power holders and persons successfully claiming to speak on behalf of a constituency lacking formal representation, in the course of which those persons make publicly visible demands for changes in the distribution or exercise of power, and back those demands with public demonstrations of support (quoted in Diani, 2000: 158)
Tilly's definition captures various important aspects of social movements from this perspective: they are unlike political parties in that they involve networks mobilized outside formal democratic representation; their demands are addressed to state elites; and they involve the formation of collective identity insofar as leaders successfully speak for a group.
On the face of it, any model of social movements derived from the premises of RMT and the 'political process' approach looks unlikely to explain the emergence of British second-wave feminism in the 60s and 70s. The overwhelming impression given by accounts of this time is that committed activists were highly suspicious both of the 'patriarchal' state and of formal organization (Stacey and Price 1981: 180; Rowbotham 1986, 1989: 145-6; Phillips 1991 ch 5; Lovenduski and Randall 1993: 4). Furthermore, the only prominent sociological analysis of the British women's movement from this perspective contrasts it with the US movement along precisely these lines. In Britain there was no overarching organization as there was in US, where the National Organization for Women mobilized women across many smaller organizations and networks into a formidable political force. In the absence of such a national organization, Joyce Gelb argues that the British movement, like the 'younger' more radical branch of the American movement, developed as a proliferation of small, non-hierarchical groups of limited scope that tended to be concerned with consciousness-raising, life-style changes and single issues than national campaigning. Lobbying took place despite the movement's hostility towards the state, and was most often carried out in collaboration with the Labour Party and trade union movement, within which women's interests have been marginal (Gelb 1989). In Gelb's view, the lack of autonomous, formal organization and failure to engage with the state has resulted in underdevelopment of the British women's movement and a relative lack of success in policy terms compared to America. She sees it as a failure of the women's movement, but also of British politics more generally, arguing that the system is closed, secretive and dominated by party politics in comparison with the US which is more open and permits more pressure for change. According to Gelb's account, then, the British political system simply did not provide the opportunities for effective, autonomous women's movement (Gelb 1986).
However, in a recent article with Vivian Hart, Gelb argues that in the 1980s and 90s the British and US women's movements began to converge. She sees the British women's movement as having been consolidated and transformed as feminists have become less decentralized and anti-elitist. As we have already noted, women are now actively involved in the formal political process to an unprecedented extent in Britain: in political parties and across a range of social policy advocacy groups, national and local organizations and state institutions (Gelb and Hart, 1999: 156-7). Gelb's and Hart's thesis is that it is a restriction of political opportunities that has convinced British feminists of the need to organize more formally to act on the state. In their view, increasingly centralized government and privatization made feminists appreciate the power of the state against outsiders and work to be included within it. At the same time, women in organizations have been enabled to mobilize resources to lobby government because of the social and professional advances they have made since the early 1980s (p. 159).
I do not propose to discuss Gelb's comparison of the relative success of British and US feminism here (cf Hewlett 1986; Bacchi 1990). I do want to suggest, however, that her account of the beginnings of second-wave feminism in Britain may be exaggerated, even if it does fit the typical image of the movement. It is important to look more closely at changes in the British state in the late 60s that did provide opportunities, however limited, for a women's movement and also at the organizations working within formal politics that did foster these opportunities, however insignificant they may appear beside NOW.
Again, this is a very under-researched area. I know of no studies that examine political opportunity structures in relation to the British social movements of the 60s and 70s, while feminist histories of the post-war period tend to emphasise the weakness of the feminist organizations that were left from the nineteenth century (Caine 1997: 234). However, what suggests that political opportunities played a more important role than has hitherto been recognised in the emergence of second-wave feminism is the relative ease with which equality legislation was passed in the 60s and 70s - especially given resistance to it throughout the century (Meehan 1985). This includes the Equal Pay Act that went through parliament in 1970 and came into force in 1975, the Sex Discrimination Act and the Employment Protection Act that established statutory maternity rights for the first time, both of which were also passed in 1975. Equality legislation was certainly not a direct consequence of the women's liberation movement. The Equal Pay Act was passed before it was even established - if we take the conventional view that it began with the national conference at Ruskin in 1970. In fact, according to Rowbotham, the campaign that developed around equal pay legislation provided a stimulus to socialist-feminist groups rather than the other way around (Rowbotham 1989: 166), (though others see it as no more than a minor contribution to the emergence of the women's liberation movement (see Lovenduski and Randall, 1993: 182)).
Undoubtedly, this legislation has been extremely limited in its effects. Arguably, however, acceptance of the principle of sexual equality is itself important, especially since it breaks with the British tradition, which has had no culture of rights politics (Gelb and Hart, 1999: 166). However, its limitations, which have been extensively analysed, are not the issue here; the question is what the ease with which the legislation was passed indicates about the emergence and form of the second-wave movement.
Vicky Randall suggests a number of contingent conditions that facilitated its passage, including requirements for entry into Europe that meant both main parties supported it, the lobbying of militant trade unionists, especially women, and women's organizations - including those of the emerging women's liberation movement that joined forces with older feminist groups - and the commitment of individual women MPs. These conditions were facilitated by the general climate of 'social reformism' in the House (Randall, 1982 p. 289; see also Meehan 1985; Lovenduski and Randall 1993: 180-1). This certainly suggests an opening of political opportunity structures, though Randall's account is not addressed to this issue. Furthermore, it is likely that without the pressure from women in the trades unions and feminist organizations, who had raised the issue of equal pay throughout the post-war period, these political opportunities would not have arisen in this form (Banks 1981: 219). If we conclude, then, that political opportunities actually were opening up at this time, we are then led to another question: is it rather that the second-wave movement did not take those opportunities? Certainly the ideas generated by second-wave feminism were ambivalent towards the state where they were not actually hostile and many groups felt there was little to gain from the use of the law (Barrett, 1980 ch. 8; Rowbotham 1989 ch. 9). Nevertheless, activists in the women's liberation movement did campaign for legal rights, even if some campaigned against particular Bills (Coote and Campbell 1987: 111). And national campaigns were organized, most notably the mobilization for free, legal abortion but also against social security regulation that reinforced women's dependence on men, on behalf of women subject to domestic violence and so on. Furthermore, women's organizations continued to work through formal political channels throughout the 70s, submitting evidence to political committees and lobbying MPs (Barrett, 1980: 245-6). Feminist action directly on the state was not irrelevant to the British women's liberation movement, even if national organizations were less prominent than in the US.
This paper is, as I have noted, methodological: intended to raise questions rather than to provide answers. The questions raised by a model of social movements based on RMT and the 'political process' approach lead us to ask whether there is not more continuity between what is commonly thought of as the 'institutionalized' feminist politics that exists today and the feminist politics of the 70s than is generally acknowledged? Indeed, insofar as those organizations that have tended to be overlooked in recent accounts survived from first-wave feminism, it invites even more of an appreciation of historical continuity, from the nineteenth century (though we should also note that there are clear discontinuities too) (Caine, 1997). As I have noted, the popular image of the British women's movement is of small, local groups involved in drop-in centres for self-education, the collective provision of nurseries, refuges against domestic violence, rape crisis centres, health centres and so on. The Greenham Common movement of the 1980s perhaps best exemplifies this image (Roseneil 1995). These aspects of the movement were undoubtedly important, and it's likely that they have had had a lasting impact on political culture as well as on local authority provision of services. The RMT and 'political process' model, however, focuses our attention on other aspects of social movement politics. If it is the case that political opportunities were available at the emergence of the women's liberation movement - and may even have contributed to that emergence - and if there were women's organizations that could have provided the basis for a more effective national movement, then it is important not to idealize the more revolutionary, 'anarcho-libertarian' aspects of feminist politics. This is not the place to speculate about whether more could or should have been achieved in the 70s through policy-making and legislation. The point is rather to raise questions about the different forms that the women's movement may take. Prejudice against what is usually categorized as 'liberal feminism' may have limited possibilities in the past, and it should not do so in the future.
I have stressed here that the 'politics of contention' model can encourage us to ask questions about the women's movement to show up features that would not easily emerge from the accounts of feminist 'movement intellectuals'. However, it is well-established that this model is also limited in various ways. The model of a social movement it proposes is good for understanding 'liberal-feminism'; it does not address other aspects of feminist politics, including all those activities that are not oriented towards bringing about changes through the state. These include the self-help organizations of the 70s mentioned above as well as activities we have noted as significant in the 90s: the contestation of popular culture and 'micro-politics' especially. Nor is it helpful for understanding the conflicts over identity that have undoubtedly had so much influence on the development of second-wave feminism. The 'politics of contention' can not provide a complete picture of the British women's movement in the 70s so that the questions that can be raised from this perspective concerning comparisons with the 90s are also limited.
The other main strand of social movement theory is New Social Movement Theory, first developed by Alain Touraine and elaborated most successfully by Alberto Melucci through a synthesis with RMT and the 'political process' approach (Melucci, 1989, 1996; Diani, 2000). The model developed by Melucci is much more consistent with the dominant picture of the British women's movement in that it stresses what he calls 'submerged networks' that exist outside formal political organizations and institutions and only rarely come to prominence in the public sphere. It is a model that is much more concerned with cultural change in the widest sense than with legislation and policy-making.
According to Melucci's definition,
'A movement is the mobilization of a collective actor (i) defined by specific solidarity, (ii) engaged in a conflict with an adversary for the appropriation and control of resources valued by both of them, (iii) and whose action entails a breach of the limits of compatibility of the system within which the action itself takes place (Melucci, 1996: 29-30).
For Melucci, then, there can be no movement without solidarity. This is a good deal stronger than the requirement of the 'political process' approach, where all that is necessary is successful speaking for a 'constituency lacking formal representation' (see above). For Melucci, solidarity involves the construction of collective identity within a specific field of opportunities and constraints. Nor is a movement possible without an enemy in his view. In these respects, Melucci's theory of movements raises sociological questions about the construction of identity and difference that are close to, and yet different from, those which have preoccupied feminists in recent times.
Melucci has, in fact, used social movement theory to analyse the development of the second-wave women's movement. He differentiates between what he calls 'feminism' - those aspects of the women's politics that we have been dealing with so far in this paper, that engage the political system - and 'the women's movement' - which relates to 'female action and its orientations' and the production of feminine cultural codes. According to Melucci, while the former addresses the political success or failure of equality politics, the latter is engaged in producing meanings for society that disrupt the dominant codes of masculine, rational modernity in which women's difference can not be recognised nor appreciated. He argues that the recent emphasis on differences between women risks destroying the women's movement as a specific social actor, reducing it to feminism, to becoming simply one pressure group among others (Melucci 1996 ch. 7). It is somewhat curious that despite Melucci's commitment to studying the specificities of social movements, his analysis of the women's movement is rather general. In fact, it is probably most appropriate to the Italian women's movement, influenced as it has been by Luce Irigaray's writings on sexual difference (Bono and Kemp 1991). Although the question of 'equality' and/or 'difference' is generally relevant given liberal-democratic structures, insofar as socialist-feminism rather than radical feminism has dominated the British women's movement, the celebration of female specificity has not been prominent. Nevertheless, as Rowbotham puts it, the British women's liberation movement of the 70s rejected emancipation associated with 'the liberal project of modernizing capitalism and with state socialism' and 'aimed instead to transform social relationships as a whole at work and at home' (Rowbotham 1996: 13). It is, therefore, not unreasonable to characterise it, using Melucci's terms, as challenging dominant masculine codes.
Melucci's model of the women's movement encourages us to think about the questions of identity and difference that have troubled feminist theorists for some time now in perhaps more sociological terms than is usual. In this way, we may hope to gain some understanding of how these issues have been of importance to feminist politics and to the history, and possible future, of the women's movement. Feminists have above all been engaged in thinking through differences within the category 'women' as it has been written about in feminist theory: firstly, around 'race', ethnicity and sexuality; and secondly, in philosophical terms, concerning the instability of the signifier 'woman' as such. But we may see these issues in rather a different light if we investigate the distinctions between 'women', 'women's movement' and 'feminism'. 'Women' is a collective identity insofar as it is social rather than natural, but it does not imply solidarity, nor collective action, as 'women's movement' does. Does the women's movement necessarily depend on the identity of women? Has it done so in the past, or are there other identities around which solidarity has been constructed? Perhaps 'feminist' is such a term? Or is Melucci right to conclude that 'women's movement' expresses the radical solidarity of the 70s and that 'feminism' in the 90s describes only pressure group politics?
Again, the point of this paper is to raise questions rather than to come up with answers. However, there would seem to be a prima facie case for thinking that 'feminist' was at least as relevant a collective identity in Britain in the 70s as 'woman' and that it was not necessarily less radical. There are numerous accounts of the beginning of the women's liberation movement in Britain that stress how solidarity was relatively unproblematic in 1970 (Wandor 1990). Others, however, disagree, arguing that ideological differences were already apparent in the late 60s (Lovenduski and Randall 1993: 4). Certainly, they did not divide it irrevocably until the final national conference of 1978. The important point here is that as conflicts became more entrenched, the usage of 'feminism' became more common than 'women's liberation'. 'Feminism', hyphenated with 'radical' or 'socialist' seems to have been used as a term to construct solidarity despite conflicts within the movement (Caine 1997: 264). Nevertheless, it is widely agreed that the solidarity of the movement did break up in 1978, splitting acrimoniously into socialist, radical and black feminist groups. This is generally linked in feminist theory to the problem of conceptualising the identity of women. It is argued that the biologically defined identity 'women' on the basis of which the women's liberation movement mobilized is inherently restrictive and exclusionary. It is a truism that participants in the women's liberation movement were mainly 'higher-educated, heterosexual, white women in their mid-20s to 30s' (Rickford, quoted in Phillips 1987) and that the agenda set by this group was actually not that of all women. In the 90s it was argued rather that feminism could only succeed if it were built on negotiating diversity and establishing coalitions rather on than supposing a 'natural' constituency of women to be liberated. In this respect, then, feminism might be taken to be more radical than the women's movement.
However, Melucci's model also suggests a reason why 'feminism' has actually been less successful than might have been hoped as a term around which to construct collective solidarity out of differences. As we have noted, in his view, there is no social movement without an adversary. Somewhat surprisingly perhaps, the question of the opponent of feminism has received a good deal less attention than that of the feminist subject. Melucci's emphasis on the adversary as a condition of solidarity is confirmed, moreover, by the emergence of the British women's liberation movement. Mobilization began where women were already networked in New Left politics and grew as a response to what was directly experienced as male domination within those political spaces. Although men attended some of the early meetings to discuss women's liberation, they were soon excluded because it was felt that they would try to dominate there too (Rowbotham 1983). The solidarity of the women's liberation movement was established within spaces where women were directly struggling against men as a concrete adversary to gain self-respect and self-determination. Moreover, according to Rowbotham, even though socialist-feminists were not opposed to men theoretically (and one of the major splits with radical feminists came over whether men should ever be allowed to attend meetings), but rather to the abstraction 'patriarchal-capitalism', in practical terms it was tacitly assumed that the women's movement was about getting men to give up power over women (Rowbotham 1989 p. 298). As she notes repeatedly throughout her history of the women's liberation movement The Past is Before Us, politics simplifies, whatever theoretical sophistications are developed, and insofar as feminists remained united in the 70s, it seems to have been 'as women', 'for women' and 'against men'.
It is currently very unfashionable to see feminism as opposed to men. Recently, women attempting, as they see it, to reclaim the political identity 'feminist' have precisely distanced themselves from what they see as an unnecessary and unpopular aspect of 70s feminism (Walter 1998; Wilkinson 1994; Walker 1995). However, if Melucci is right about the way in which the solidarity of a movement is constructed, and if feminism is to be anything more than a collection of loosely allied pressure groups, then it is important to give more consideration to the concrete adversary to whom feminists are opposed. It is not that feminism must, by definition, be opposed to men. This was not true of the beginning of first-wave feminism, for example, in which women paid tribute John Stuart Mill and other prominent men in the movement without any sense of contradiction (Delmar 1986: 27). However, the question that Melucci's theory raises is 'if not men, then who?' and this is worth thinking about from the point of view of both historical and contemporary feminism.
Finally, this point is linked to the third element of Melucci's definition of social movement: that it should be engaged in breaking the limits of the system within which it finds itself. It is less obvious that this is a necessary condition of movements' existence, and indeed it does not seem to function in quite the same way as Melucci's other points. It serves rather as a way of distinguishing social movements from pressure groups, single-issue protest groups and so on and it is linked to Melucci's theory of social change in general. However, this point is directly related to the question of men as a concrete adversary for the women's movement insofar as it is argued that we simply do not live in a world in which men embody patriarchy in the way they once did. This can be related to the success of feminism itself, despite continuing inequalities of pay, opportunities and so on. Social movements in Melucci's model are seen as engaged in struggles over naming, through language but also through lived experience, in ways that directly challenge dominant cultural codes (Melucci, 1996: 357-8). In the words of Ron Eyerman and Andrew Jamieson, who follow Melucci here, 'Social movements are thus best conceived of as temporary public spaces, as moments of collective creation that provide societies with ideas, identities and even ideals' (Eyerman and Jamieson 1991: 4). In their view, successful social movements are necessarily temporary since their success lies precisely in the way they re-define social actors and situations; the longer they remain outside the mainstream, the less successful they can be considered to be.
Mary Katzenstein has given some thought to the effects of the women's movement on social constructions of reality. She distinguishes between what she calls 'feminist consciousness' and 'receptivity to feminist ideas'. In the first case there is full-blown identification with the women's movement, including feelings of solidarity with women as a group, discontent with women's lack of power and influence and the belief that gender disparities are illegitimate. In the second case there may actually be a dis-identification with the women's movement, but there is nevertheless an 'inchoate rejection of societal discrimination and of the structures that cause women's subjection' (Katzenstein 1987). This is the case of those women, often referred to in feminist literature, who say 'I'm not a feminist but…' and then articulate a demand or objection that would have been unthinkable without the feminist movement. Although the movement has not been successful in eliminating inequalities, arguably it has been very successful in generating resistance of this kind.
Insofar as this is the case, 'the trouble with patriarchy' becomes still more pronounced. 'Patriarchy' has always been a contested term in feminist thought, criticised as too monolithic to describe the complexities of gender relations: it fails to allow for women's defiance of men and it suggests that men always oppress women, regardless of other axes along which power may be exercised - 'race', ethnicity, class and so on (Rowbotham 1982; Barrett 1980). Feminist analyses of contemporary society invariably specify how gender relations intersect with these other dimensions of power and present them as complex, fragmented and contested. In part this is undoubtedly an effect of postmodern theorizing, so that it is a matter of changing understanding of gender relations rather than of changes in social reality itself (Walby 1992). However, it may be that postmodern theory is itself a response to more complex reality. It may be that the disruptive effects of transformations in political economy and culture that are variously termed 'post-Fordism', 'disorganized capitalism', 'late capitalism' and so on have combined with the effects of feminism to significantly alter the ways in which gender relations are lived in contemporary society. In this respect, although it is notoriously difficult to separate out the effects of feminism from these other transformations, the women's movement may have contributed to 'breaking the bounds of the system' that existed as a form of patriarchy in the 60s and 70s. In this case, the current tendency for feminists to refer to 'patriarchal' relations rather than to patriarchy as such is not simply the result of theoretical changes. It is also linked to changes in social reality that make 'patriarchy' less compelling as a description of gender relations than it was before the spread of 'receptivity to feminist ideas'.
In this paper we have looked at the two principal models of social movement theory. I have suggested ways in which they might be used to ask questions about the women's movement of the 60s and 70s, whist remaining critical of the very different pictures of social movements each proposed by each one. I have also suggested ways in which they might be used to make sense of contemporary signs of feminist activities that may or may not add up to a movement today. According to RMT and the 'political process' model, it is possible that a new wave of the feminist movement could now be developing. The only addition necessary, given that there are organizations and groups addressing the government on women's issues, would be protestors prepared to express support for particular measures outside formal political channels. The most obvious example of this type of protest is the large, well-publicized demonstration. There were estimated to be 100,000 participants at the biggest demonstration of the women's movement, which took place in 1979, protesting against restrictions proposed to the Abortion Act of 1967 (Byrne, 1996: 60). The fact that it was a defensive protest is interesting. Although, as we have seen, it is doubtful whether we can identify a women's movement in Britain today that resembles that of the 70s, it is also difficult to imagine women remaining quiescent if abortion rights were threatened. The point here, however, is that without this dimension of extra-parliamentary activity, from the point of view of this school of social movement theory, women's organizations will be nothing more than interest groups: they do not, in and of themselves, amount to a social movement.
From the point of view of Melucci's theory of social movements as 'submerged networks' there is currently a women's movement insofar as there are self-identified feminists actively engaged in publishing, bookshops, women's studies centres, women's refuges and so on. Of course, the numbers are relatively small, but even at its peak it would be far-fetched to describe the women's movement as 'mass'. It is very difficult even to estimate how many women are involved in the movement at any one time, given that there is no formal membership. However, according to Bouchier, in 1980 - just as the movement was in decline from its peak - there were about 20,000 committed activists (Bouchier 1983 p. 177). It seems likely that there are at least this many involved in the women's movement now, though most are probably a good deal less active than they were in the 70s. It is possible that a larger and more active movement could grow in the future. As we have seen, according to Melucci's theory, this implies simplifications in the realm of practical politics, a taking up of positions that map out an 'us' versus 'them' which seems a long way from the complexities of postmodern feminist accounts of contemporary society. If Melucci is right and movement solidarity depends on such simplifications, this currently seems unlikely on anything but a small-scale.
We have also looked at a further possibility, that there is currently a form of politics that is an effect of the women's movement it has replaced. This is the politics of 'I'm not a feminist but…', the 'micropolitics' of everyday life. Melucci distinguishes what he calls aggregative politics from solidaristic movement politics. An aggregation does not involve collective identity or solidarity, but only 'spatio-temporal contiguity' (Melucci, 1996: 23). Melucci has actually developed the concept to analyse collective behaviour such as crowd behaviour, panic and fashions. However, it may be that 'aggregative politics' better describes these contemporary political acts that disrupt traditional gender relations than do either of the models of social movements we have looked at. This is not necessarily a pessimistic conclusion. Insofar as social structures are maintained in everyday acts, they may be modified or even transformed by such small acts of disruption. It is possible that the 'aggregative politics' that are the effect of the feminist movement are actually more like a social revolution than a new wave of the women's movement.
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Notes:
1 It should be noted at the outset that there is a difficulty in characterising the British women's movement in that there are significant differences between Scotland and England in this respect. As Breitenbach et al have pointed out, in its typical usage 'British women's movement' actually means 'English women's movement': differences from Scotland are rarely noted. In particular, it is generally agreed that the Scottish movement remained strong throughout the 80s and 90s, as did the Scottish left, and it was able to consolidate its institutional influence with constitutional reform in the mid-90s (Breitenbach, Brown and Myers 1998; Brown 1996). Here I will follow the common usage of the writers on the British women's movement that I am discussing.