Women and the 1960s Counterculture

Abstract

The Counterculture of the 1960s set the stage culturally for the Women's Movement much as the New Left and Civil Rights Movement had done politically. The Counterculture challenged all the conventional social realities: sexual relations, art and media, religion, and the family. In its own alternatives, it espoused female values and a feminine way of being while it oppressed women in practice. The Counterculture broke down the liberal distinction between the public/political and the private/personal. It treated as primary and public those values and characteristics traditionally assigned to women and children in the private sphere. The Counterculture emphasised spontaneity and dependence on others, rather than self-control; intuition and feeling, instead of detached rationality; cooperation and consensus over competition and efficiency; and a preference for face-to-face relationships rather than bureaucratic structure. The Counterculture also devalued those social priorities and motivations which had been traditionally masculine — aggressiveness, toughness, material success — and which had rewarded men more than women.