The Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1970s and 1980s saw a surge in women’s
publishing that generated a woman-controlled communication infrastructure in the form of
feminist periodicals. As a result of women actively contributing to the letter-to-the-editor
pages, these periodicals offer rich source material for tracing the development of areas of
feminist contention. While significant research has been done on the role of print-based
feminist networks in the US by Agatha Beins and Martha Allan, its UK counterpart remains
under-researched. By means of a systematic documentation and analysis of second wave
feminist periodicals in the UK, this research aims to understand the primary role of these
networks in facilitating the development of feminist ideas.
The research was conducted by means of a feminist archival methodology to access primary
sources of correspondences found in pertinent periodicals. The selecting of material was
predicated on a gradual identification of overarching disagreements in letter-to-the-editor
pages, some of which transcended one particular periodical and re-emerged in other titles. As
such, the periodicals in question are approached as a networked and networking infrastructure
of communication and exchange. Tracing these debates not only resulted in highlighting the
discursive and networking function, it additionally challenges popularised caricatures of the
Women’s Liberation Movement by evidencing polyvocal and multi-textual negotiations.
This thesis argues that the medium of the feminist periodical was especially well suited to
mediating conflict, as it produced a collective body of theoretical knowledge within the
movement, while also repeatedly inviting readers to contribute with a plurality of opinion. By
documenting how these debates travelled across multiple periodical titles, new light is shed
on how the development of feminist theory and practice was reliant on a webbed network of
debate. Rather than understanding conflict as an indication of failure, it appears that it is in
fact suggestive of feminist theorising reaching critical momentum. Letter-to-the-editor pages
evidence a distinct rhetoric of considered disagreement which disavowed “final word”
arguments and emphasised the opening, rather than closing, of political debate. This research
contributes to the fields of women’s history and feminist media studies by detailing how
second wave feminist periodicals, through their correspondence pages, functioned as
indispensable forums for the articulation of criticism and facilitated the advancement of
feminist discourse.