CHALLENGING NARRATIVES:The Women's Liberation Movement in Pittsburgh in the 1970s

TL;DRAbstract

In the 1960s and 1970s, a women's movement thrived in the United States. Current explanationsof the movement either privilege the equality strand, focusing on national networks andprofessional organizations, or they concentrate on the radical liberation strand in the largesturban settings in the United States. Explanations also historically locate the women's movementas a Second Wave of feminism and a product of the New Left, a reaction to gender and racialdiscrimination and earlier authoritarian practices. However, these explanations ignore local variations in the women's movement throughout the country, painting an unrepresentative picture of the movement as a whole. This study examines the women's liberation movement in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the 1970s to challenge some dominant explanations of the movement and add another case to the literature. It compares and contrasts the complex local variations of the movement and explores the movement's origins to investigate an underly

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