Feminist struggles: the Women's Liberation Movement turns 50

Text by: Lina Taghy Follow

6 min

Non-mixed and independent, the Women's Liberation Movement (MLF) has participated in improving the condition of women in the history of the twentieth century in France. Many advances have taken place since its inception, from the legalization of abortion to new ways of fighting for women's rights. Today, Wednesday August 26, he is celebrating his 50th birthday.

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Paris, August 26, 1970. Under the Arc de Triomphe, a dozen women lay a wreath "for the wife of the unknown soldier". On their banners, we can read: "  There is more unknown than the unknown soldier, his wife  " or "  One in two men is a woman  ". This first media release is in solidarity with the strike of American women who celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of women's suffrage in the United States, and marks the beginnings of a movement that will revolutionize France.

It was in the wake of the May 1968 movement - and in opposition to the invisibilization of women in it - that the Women's Liberation Movement (MLF) was born, founded among others by Antoinette Fouque, Monique Wittig and Josiane Chanel. The MLF is the result of the regrouping of different feminist associations, and quickly, small groups belonging to different currents are formed within the movement. Antoinette Fouque creates for example the collective “Psychoanalysis and politics” through which she claims a “  uterine libido  ” in opposition to the Freudian theory, and tries to make it exist on the political scene. Groups can also emanate from existing dissensions: homosexuality and the condition of lesbian women, for example, are not a priority within the MLF, so much so that in 1971, the Homosexual Front for Revolutionary Action was formed within movement, in an attempt to counter the invisibilization of lesbian women.

The movement gave birth to the first women's publishing house in Europe in 1973, which was followed in 1974 by the opening of the first women's bookstore in Paris. The activists also launched into the distribution of collective publications to share their ideas: Le Torchon brûlle , journal of the movement, was published between 1971 and 1973.

Provocative actions and media personalities

The groups that make up the MLF differ on strategic and political questions, but all come together for common actions around the right to abortion, the liberation of bodies or against domestic violence. Battles carried by public and political figures who mark history.

One of the first actions of the MLF is to support the hunger strike started by the residents of the home for pregnant teenagers in Plessis-Robinson in the Paris suburbs, in 1971. Simone de Beauvoir goes to meet them, accompanied by journalists, to denounce the living conditions of these young girls between 13 and 17 years old: school exclusion, marginalization, abuse.

Also in 1971, many activists from the Women's Liberation Movement signed the “  Manifesto of 343  ”. Written by Simone de Beauvoir, published in Le Nouvel Observateur , this manifesto brings together the signatures of 343 women, including personalities such as Catherine Deneuve, who claim to have aborted, and thus expose themselves to criminal proceedings that can go as far as prison. When the Bobigny trial broke out in 1972, the MLF campaigned alongside Gisèle Halimi who then defended a teenage girl tried for having aborted following rape. It was finally in 1974 that the law decriminalizing abortion, carried by the Minister of Health, Simone Veil , was voted in the Assembly for a provisional period of five years. On October 6, 1979, the MLF co-organized a march for the right to voluntary termination of pregnancy which brought together tens of thousands of demonstrators in Paris, in the wake of this event, the Veil law became final.

► To listen : [Major pleadings series] Maître Gisèle Halimi at the Bobigny trial

The influence of the Women's Liberation Movement pushed society to transform and to review its values ​​throughout the second half of the 20th century. Feminist advances for women's rights were encouraged by the movement, as in 1974, when the first Secretary of State for the Status of Women was created in France, at the head of which was placed journalist Françoise Giroud . Reimbursement of voluntary termination of pregnancy was authorized in 1982 under the leadership of Yvette Roudy , then Minister of Women's Rights. The Roudy law passed in 1983 also imposes the equality of men and women in political institutions.

Divisions as a legacy

In 1979, a controversy broke out: Antoinette Fouque filed the acronym of the movement and created an association of the same name. Some activists castigate this gesture which they describe as appropriation of the movement by a handful of people. Antoinette Fouque assures thereafter that her intention was to prevent MLF from falling into oblivion. The institutionalization of feminist dynamics brought about by the arrival of the left to power in 1981, with the election of François Mitterrand, and the creation of the minister responsible for women's rights, as well as the divisions within the movement which took root. magnitude, undermine the influence of the MLF.

Today, the legacy of the MLF in feminist struggles exists but remains light. The actions and history of the MLF are not taught in school, so new generations of activists often have to build their feminism on their own and educate themselves about current struggles on social networks as a priority, through educational accounts on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, or through podcasts and articles. Even if the slogans and the hymn of the MLF are repeated in demonstrations, young feminists take a certain distance with the movement often perceived as considering too little the other forms of discrimination against women, such as racism or homophobia. The legacy of the Women's Liberation Movement is most evident in the methods. The strong and media actions carried by the MLF continue in today's feminist struggles, through movements such as Colleuses, Femen or La Barbe. A way of occupying the public space, to bring the demands to the eyes of all.

►  See also: International Women's Day: the march of Parisiennes

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