Women: A Journal of Liberation

WOMEN: A JOURNAL OF LIBERATION. The magazine first appeared in fall 1969 and continued publishing, more or less regularly, until 1982. Along with off our backs, Up from Under, and Aphra, Women: A Journal of Liberation represented the first wave of periodicals to accompany the revival of feminism in the late 1960s. Ideologically, it identified itself with the women’s liberation movement, as opposed to the women’s rights perspective of the National Organization for Women: “the word ‘liberation’ … implies a deep consciousness of the significance of our struggle: women are asking for nothing less than the total transformation of the world” (from vol. 2, no. 1, 1970). At a less elevated level of rhetoric, the difference between radical and liberal was not so great; Women: A Journal defined its goal for women as greater choice, its target as predetermined social roles. Women: A Journal did not distinguish between what was later called “radical,” or “cultural,” and “socialist” feminism, but embraced both in its understanding of the tasks of women’s liberation. Thus, early issues included articles about both sexuality and class, lifestyle and imperialism. Issues were organized around a thematic focus in a deliberate effort to parallel the consciousness-raising focus of early women’s liberation. Early themes included women’s history, the family, and women workers under capitalism.

Women: A Journal was published in Baltimore but served a larger audience. (It estimated its readership in 1970 was 15,000.) Inasmuch as the early women’s liberation movement was largely local in structure, with almost no national existence, the Journal played a crucial role in circulating news and writings between cities. Important articles identified with particular localities—for instance, Roxanne Dunbar’s article on poor white women, first published by No More Fun and Games in Boston—received a national audience in Women: A Journal. Brief reports on women’s liberation activities around the United States played a similar function; there, readers learned about the Miss America protest in Atlantic City, abortion activism in Lansing, and what the Redstockings were doing in New York City.

A subscribers’ survey (vol. 3, no. 1, 1972) provides information on who read Women: A Journal. Subscribers were well educated but ill paid (most had some graduate education, most earned under $10,000 a year), presumably white women. Despite the Journal’s emphasis on communal and other alternative lifestyles, the largest group of subscribers (one-third) lived in nuclear families, which seemed cause for self-criticism (“It seems that we’re all fairly conservative in this area, after all”).

In keeping with the relentlessly anti-hierarchical character of the early women’s liberation movement, Women: A Journal was published by a collective, albeit of changing membership. Pride of authorship was discouraged. Rotating tasks among collective members, distributing rather than consolidating skills, was the rule, even the pride of the publishing collective. By 1980 the magazine appeared more irregularly, and wider swings in ideological focus between issues suggest a lack of continuity in the collective. A further sign of the decline of Women: A Journal was the appearance, by 1981, of a single editor and other attempts at professionalization, including a rather formal market research study of the magazine’s readership. The last two issues appeared in 1981 (Peace and War) and 1982 (Bodies).

Dear Sisters: Dispatches from The Women's Liberation Movement, eds. Rosalynn Baxandall and Linda Gordon. New York: Basic Books, 2002.

Public Women, Public Words: 1960 to the present, eds. Dawn Keetley and John Pettegrew Indianapolis: Madison House, 2000.

Rosen, Ruth. The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed America. New York: Viking, 2000.

Women: A Journal of Liberation. Finding Aid. Sophia Smith Collection of Women’s History. Smith College Libraries.