Background Anarchism first emerged as a political current at a time when
gender inequality was systematically enforced and women were excluded from public life. Their existence was confined to the traditional
gender roles of mothers and wives, within the construct of the
nuclear family. In particular, working-class women were both politically and economically disenfranchised, which drove them closer to
socialism and
political militancy. They began to agitate for
reproductive rights and
free love, which formed the basis for an anarchist feminism. The earliest proponents of anarchism were initially reluctant to approach the subject of feminism:
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was openly hostile to feminist demands of
gender equality and upheld traditional
family values;
Peter Kropotkin thought that feminist goals should be subordinated to the
class struggle; and
Benjamin Tucker opposed the demand of "
equal pay for equal work". It was only after
Mikhail Bakunin made the abolition of
gender inequality one of the aims of the
International Alliance of Socialist Democracy that women's rights became a primary concern for the anarchist movement.
Anarcho-communists adopted
Friedrich Engels'
critique of the family, which held it to be the origin of both gender inequality and
economic inequality. This
anti-authoritarian critique of
power within the institutions of
marriage and the nuclear family began to attract many feminists towards anarchism. The subsequent synthesis of anarchism and feminism, although not explicitly labelled as such at the time, later came to be known as anarcha-feminism.
First wave (1880s–1940s) , one of the first proponents of the anarcha-feminist synthesis During the 1880s, a current of anarchist feminism was first developed by the Catalan activists
Teresa Mañé and
Teresa Claramunt. By the 1890s, anarchist feminism had spread across the globe, brought by immigrants to and from Europe. The anarchist press started to publish feminist analyses on
gender equality and critiques of marriage, the nuclear family and
prostitution. Through
Errico Malatesta's
La Questione Sociale, Teresa Mañé's pamphlets on
female education and
gender inequality received widespread publication. Anarchist feminism was further taken up by the American anarchists
Voltairine de Cleyre and
Emma Goldman, the latter of whom came to be considered a "founding mother" of anarcha-feminism.
Lucy Parsons also established the Working Women's Union in
Chicago and ensured women's participation in the
Industrial Workers of the World as one of its founding members. In England, the anarchist
Charlotte Wilson became an advocate for "
equal pay for equal work" and promoted women's education. Anarchist women took prominent positions within the editorial boards of magazines (such as
Mother Earth), in the publication of books, and as public speakers. Specifically feminist publications were also circulated, including
Germinal,
El Oprimido and
La Voz de la Mujer, in which anarchist women defended a revolutionary form of feminism. As a way to counter the
Culture of Domesticity, which upheld the
private property of the nuclear family, anarchist women like Charlotte Wilson opened their homes into "quasi-public spaces" for political meetings and communal meals. Anarchist women even took part in violent
direct actions, including
Vera Zasulich's attempted assassination of the Russian police chief
Fyodor Trepov;
Germaine Berton's murder of the French far-right politician
Marius Plateau; and
Kanno Sugako's plot to assassinate the Japanese
Emperor Meiji. The rise of anarchist feminism provoked an
anti-feminist reaction among many of the men of the anarchist movement, who deemphasised the struggle for
women's rights as secondary to the
class struggle. In turn,
La Voz de la Mujer denounced these men as "false anarchists" who prioritised their own liberation over that of women. In the Chinese anarcha-feminist journal
Natural Justice,
He Zhen also criticised what she saw as "men's pursuit of self distinction in the name of women's liberation". Anarcha-feminists generally concluded that male hostility to feminism proved them unreliable to the cause for women's rights, and began to organise their own movement to address their own needs. First-wave feminists established women's groups as
flat organizations that used
consensus decision-making, reflecting an "unconscious libertarian consciousness". Anarchist women's groups were established throughout the United States, largely by Italian immigrant women, with the goal of pursuing "women's emancipation" through
mutual aid and
self-organization. In
Paterson, New Jersey, the
Gruppo Emancipazione della Donna formed women's theater and music clubs, and publicised works of anarchist feminism that linked the struggle against the
patriarchy with the struggle against the
patria. In contrast to the Italian anarchists,
Jewish anarchists rarely formed specific women's groups, with anarchists of the journal
Fraye Arbeter Shtime declaring themselves to all be feminists. meeting with
Emma Goldman, during the latter's visit to the
Spanish Republic in 1938 One of the most notable libertarian women's groups was the
Mujeres Libres, an anarchist feminist organisation that aimed for
women's liberation from their "triple enslavement" by ignorance, exploitation and discrimination. Founded during the
Spanish Revolution of 1936 by
Lucía Sánchez Saornil,
Mercè Comaposada and
Amparo Poch y Gascón, the Mujeres Libres implemented programmes of
women's education that taught women technical skills and increased female literacy. Sánchez Saornil herself wrote poetry that called for women to take action against their oppression, which attracted Emma Goldman to visit Spain and participate in the work of the Mujeres Libres as an advocate. But the anarchist feminism of the time, focused more on developing small activist groups than creating a
mass movement, lacked a precise strategy for achieving women's rights, so little action in that way was taken. During the early 20th century, anarchist feminism was progressively supplanted by
socialist feminism, which took a reformist approach towards achieving
women's suffrage. By this time Charlotte Wilson had herself abandoned anarchist activism, becoming involved in women's suffrage advocacy and later joining the
Independent Labour Party. Anarchist feminist critiques of the family and authoritarianism went into remission, only to be reformulated when a new wave of feminism emerged.
Second wave (1960s–1980s) , whose 1972 essay
The Tyranny of Structurelessness held a large influence during
second-wave of anarcha-feminism By the late 1960s,
second-wave feminism had emerged from the
New Left, as part of a broad wave of anti-oppression activism that included the
civil rights movement and culminated with the
protests of 1968. Drawing from socialist feminism, this second-wave sought to encourage solidarity between women, bringing them together into a "" based on their shared experiences. During this period, feminists rediscovered the work of first-wave anarchist feminists like Emma Goldman and before long the
women's liberation movement began to reshape the anarchist movement. Many second-wave feminists came to consider anarchism to be the "logically consistent expression of feminism", due to its synthesis of the struggle for individual
liberty with that for
social equality.
Peggy Kornegger claimed that feminists had already been "unconscious anarchists in both theory and practice" and were the only activist tendency to be "practic[ing] what anarchism preaches". The pervasive environment of sexism within many sections of the New Left gave an impulse to the establishment of women's groups as part of a strategy of
feminist separatism, which led to the coining and adoption of the term "anarcha-feminist" by anarchist women. Second-wave anarchist feminists developed their own
affinity groups according to cooperative, decentralist and federalist principles, as an alternative to both patriarchal and structureless organisations. The anarcha-feminist drive to reckon with these hierarchical forms of organisation was particularly influenced by
Jo Freeman's 1972 essay
The Tyranny of Structurelessness, which encouraged an organized egalitarian tendency within the movement. The second wave of anarchist feminism was also characterised by an often violent militancy, as displayed in the
SCUM Manifesto. Anarcha-feminists such as
Ann Hansen participated in the bombing attacks by the urban guerrilla group
Direct Action, which targeted companies that produced parts for weapons of war and a chain video store that was distributing
snuff films and
paedophilic pornography. By the 1980s, the
feminist sex wars had caused a divide within second-wave feminism, which fragmented into multiple different tendencies, while many former feminists moved into
academic careerism.
Third wave (1990s–2000s) The beginnings of the
anti-globalization movement spurred the development of a new wave, with reflections on the earlier second-wave and the influence of
postcolonial feminism leading to an integration of
identity politics into the framework of anarchist feminism. The emergence of a third-wave of anarcha-feminism brought with it a new focus on
intersectionality, as anarcha-feminists came together to address the intersecting issues of
poverty,
racism and
reproductive rights, among many others. The early feminist conception of a "
New Woman" also formed part of the foundation for third-wave anarcha-feminism, which encouraged women to practice equality rather than to demand it. In
Bolivia, the
Mujeres Creando carried out
direct actions that challenged poverty and traditional
gender roles. In the United States, anarcha-feminists within the
anarcho-punk scene spurred the development of the
Riot grrrl subculture. With the turn of the 21st century, there was a concerted effort to rethink approaches to anarcha-feminist histories, placing value in
collective,
open and non-hierarchical methods of gathering and exchanging knowledge. Collective research projects were carried out by groups such as the Dark Star Collective, which in 2002 published an anthology of anarcha-feminist works titled
Quiet Rumours. In 2010, the feminist historian Judy Greenway elaborated five different methodologies of anarcha-feminist historiography: • The "additive approach", which incorporates elements otherwise overlooked in existing historiography; • The "Emma Goldman Short-Circuit", which centres the contributions of Emma Goldman above all others; • The "women's issues approach", which is chiefly concerned with issues of sexuality and reproductive rights; • The "inclusive approach", which focuses on the role of women in famous historical events; • The "transformative approach", which takes a critical look at the erasure of women and privileged position of men in gendered histories. and the symbolism of anarcha-feminism (2025) Greenway concluded that a complete anarcha-feminist historiography needed to actively challenge hierarchical biases within dominant historiographies, rather than merely reincorporating erased aspects of history or focusing excessively on one or two individuals.
Fourth wave (2012–present) The fourth wave of feminism emerged through the development of
postfeminism, taking concern with the
objectification of women by market forces and characterised by its use of
social networking. The fourth wave of anarchist feminism was particularly influenced by
postmodern feminism. In a 2017 article,
Chiara Bottici argued that anarcha-feminism has been the subject of insufficient discussion in public debate and in academia, due in part to a broader hostility to anarchism but also due to difficulties in distinguishing between the tendency of anarcha-feminism and the broader philosophy of anarchism. Bottici argued that the risk of economic
reductionism that appears in
Marxist feminism, in which women's oppression is understood solely in economic terms, "has ... always been alien to anarcha-feminism"; as such, she argues, anarchism is better suited than Marxism for an alliance with feminism. == Theory ==