Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>This history examines transnational links within the 1970s women’s liberation movement through a triangular case study of connections between activists in the US, UK, and France. It focuses on the first decade of this radical movement, which was women-only, was leaderless, and grew from the grassroots. Groups were varied, and methods of struggle were diverse—from consciousness-raising, street theatre, and squatting, to feminist bookshops, healthcare centres, and refuges for women fleeing domestic violence. How did such an informal movement manage to grow across different cities, regions, and countries? To answer this question, a survey of American, British, and French archival material was undertaken, and life history interviews with eighteen activists were conducted. Based upon analyses of these textual, visual, and oral history sources, the chapters move from activist awakenings, politicisation (within student movements, the New Left, the civil rights movement, and 1968), and movement formation to different areas of activism including feminist theory, protest, women’s healthcare, and the establishment of childcare, refuge, and rape crisis services. Throughout, this history traces the creation and travel, via movement networks, of ideas—feminist texts, protest tactics, organisational ideas—and then analyses the ways they were adapted by activists in other countries to new contexts. While women’s liberation ideas were primarily constructed and implemented at a local level, this does not minimise the importance of the transnational. It is precisely through a study of the local, regional, and national that this history uncovers the transnational.</jats:p>