The Greenham Common protests in the 1980s saw unusually high levels of female participation. The protests saw women engaging with politics on the extremely important issue of US nuclear missiles being stored on British army bases. A whole new generation of women now felt confident enough to attempt to blockade a US Air Force base, as Jill Liddington argues. This can be identified as another potential turning point for feminist progress. Greenham was symbolically significant, as it seemed to give many women a new confidence, with many going on to college. Although this participation was good for women, their attention had been swallowed up, once again, by non-women’s issues. Laura Shepherd makes the important observation that although the
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Following on from this, the Labour Party welcomed women into its ranks on a larger scale than previously seen; although the party’s masculine, working class culture marginalised feminist issues, reducing the impact of feminist efforts. This along with the grudging loyalty of female politicians to the status quo and the political climate of the Cold War period greatly restricted the impact of women in politics. However, the 1970s saw a small breakthrough for women in politics as a radical feminist agenda was pushed through, allowing legislation to be passed with a view to deconstructing gender roles in Britain. Despite the early 1970s appearing to be a breakthrough period, in reality most feminist legislation was ineffective. The Equal Pay Act, for example, took five year to come into force and when it did, it was soon rendered ineffective as employers found ways to avoid paying women an equal wage to men. A great deal of feminist legislation that was introduced throughout this period was unrealistic as the end goals could not be achieved at once. As the 1970 Equal Pay Act shows, the technicalities of each issue must be tackled one at a time to ensure that legislation has an impact in reality, allowing progress to continue. Since the 1990s, there have been significantly more women in politics. Despite the increase of women in politics, they have failed to destroy patriarchy, which has been a result of the confining patriarchal Parliament that has only allowed women a minority position. The House of Commons has remained a male dominated environment and society remains geared towards discriminating against women, with the media being an important facet in reinforcing patriarchy. Caroline Lucas’ suggestion of legislative action is exactly the type of approach likely to help achieve feminist goals. The impact
Following on from this, the Labour Party welcomed women into its ranks on a larger scale than previously seen; although the party’s masculine, working class culture marginalised feminist issues, reducing the impact of feminist efforts. This along with the grudging loyalty of female politicians to the status quo and the political climate of the Cold War period greatly restricted the impact of women in politics. However, the 1970s saw a small breakthrough for women in politics as a radical feminist agenda was pushed through, allowing legislation to be passed with a view to deconstructing gender roles in Britain. Despite the early 1970s appearing to be a breakthrough period, in reality most feminist legislation was ineffective. The Equal Pay Act, for example, took five year to come into force and when it did, it was soon rendered ineffective as employers found ways to avoid paying women an equal wage to men. A great deal of feminist legislation that was introduced throughout this period was unrealistic as the end goals could not be achieved at once. As the 1970 Equal Pay Act shows, the technicalities of each issue must be tackled one at a time to ensure that legislation has an impact in reality, allowing progress to continue. Since the 1990s, there have been significantly more women in politics. Despite the increase of women in politics, they have failed to destroy patriarchy, which has been a result of the confining patriarchal Parliament that has only allowed women a minority position. The House of Commons has remained a male dominated environment and society remains geared towards discriminating against women, with the media being an important facet in reinforcing patriarchy. Caroline Lucas’ suggestion of legislative action is exactly the type of approach likely to help achieve feminist goals. The impact