Radical and Cultural Feminisms

Abstract

This chapter explores the social movement of radical feminism. Emerging out of the women's liberation movement of the late 1960s, radical feminism began with a group of American second‐wave feminists referring to themselves as “radical women” and then eventually adopting the radical feminist label. While the movement was born in the United States, it soon spread to other English‐speaking countries. While the heyday of radical feminism is aligned with feminism's second‐wave – from the mid‐1960s until the early 1980s – some scholars have suggested that the movement isn't totally historic. Radical feminism has, in recent years, substantially impacted on public policy in Scandinavian countries and while the number of radical feminist groups and the volume of their activity may have reduced in the last half‐century, radical feminist scholarship is still being produced. In this chapter, I examine the principles of radical feminism and explore its criticisms and shortcomings. I end with a discussion of legacy and radical feminism's continued relevance into the twenty‐first century.