What was the understanding of the origins of womens oppression and what needed to be done?
SH: There was a lot of excitement in the early days about discussing sexual oppression in consciousness-raising meetings. We found it very liberating. It was about the time when the pill became freely available, so it fitted in with changing attitudes to sexual behaviour. Women were starting to demand the right to have sexual freedom as they perceived men always had, and it actually became a possibility because of contraception. We spent hours debating the origins of women’s oppression, frequently starting with Engels’ work The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. We looked at capitalism and imperialism and then there were all the arguments about housework and child-rearing and the role of women in the paid work force. We started to do some work on the value of women’s work to the economy which wasn’t recognised, wasn’t counted as part of the gross domestic product. We were discussing whether housework should be paid. The other thing to remember is that the equal pay c
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