reveals the decade.
children, writes CELIA PUGH.
against lesbian mothers, example, liberal sections of the mass media have sympathetically examined this question. Who could have imagined such * Equal pay now.
OK Scarcely a day goes by when the media does not have some item which — in however distorted a fashion growing influence of the women's movement and the ideas it has generated over the past Noone can now ignore the challenge to the notion that UNTHINKABLE women's place is in the home: as passive sex objects sacrificing their needs to those of their husband and In spite of the initial outrage' athing evena few yearsapo?
for The manager of a Tesco supermarket can be made to apologetically withdraw from rapist, A newspaper such as the The six demands of the WLM * Free contraception and abortion on demand.
* Free 24-hour community controlled nurseries.
* Equal education and job opportunities.
* For financial and legal independence.
* For the right to a self-defined sexuality.
abortion EQUAL TRICO WOMAN'S RIGHT TO WORK гадс, women папете, дрогtion and the repression of gay people are no longer seen as purely individual concern Many of these questions are being raised within the labour again would have been virtually unthinkable a decade ago. Who the TU Can the Labour Party could be made to register thei support for free abortion on reguest, as happened in 1975 This is among the ments thathave been clocked up by the Movement. and the campaten which it has the Working Women's Charter Campaign demands that adopted as official policy by many union organisations: and the National Abortion Campaign. which has led demonstrations of over 20,000 opposed to compulsory motherhood That is one side of the picture, But against the renewed impetus of women to snap the chains of their oppression stand some of the most powerful ideas that assist in wreckage of latter-daycapitalist sociery.
And many of these ideas -fundamentally that places in the home — tand their most fervent supporters in the workers' movement. There are far too marry examples of how these ELLISHNEY divided working class men and women: in failing to support women astrikes; in ignoring the closure of nurseries, and otber public expenditure cuts which clo to make woman's prison; in denying the C RESIST right of women whether to have children.
The ability of the labour movement concerted onslaught on living depends on its willingness to Interests of all working people snd oppressed society. An obvious step — and yet one that has still to be broadly accepted — is support for measures to aid women's participation in the labour meetings: right of meetings held during working CONFIDENCE Women's groups workplace and in the community — have led women to a new recognise and fight for their owninterestsand demands, The Women's Liberation Move ment is amessential backbone to this development. matters of private or something that achieveWomen's Liberation Spawned, such a:
with its ten have been propping up the women's Further information from: Radical Midwives, 19 Bloomfield Crecent, Leeds 6. Wo.nen's Liberation Movement are meeting this weekend at a national conference. The issues that will be discussed have a wide relevance, not least for the current debates on programme and strategy on On pages 7 to 10, Socialist Challenge carries and contributions on the impact that the women's movement has made, its growth, and the debates within it. We hope that in future issues other women activists will contribute on their own ideas and MARGE WRIGHT of the Society to Support Home Confinements speaking at a Radical Mid.
vies Conference held in London on Saturday. Sixty attended, to discuss issuee such as:
altomative patters of pregnancy and childbirth; re-astabilshing the confidence al midwives in their own skiis: and encouricino them to allow the sctive carlicibe on of women in birth.
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the far left. experience.