The women's liberation movement in Europe was a radical feminist movement that started in the late 1960s and continued through the 1970s and in some cases into the early 1980s. Inspired by developments in North America and triggered by the growing presence of women in the labour market, the movement soon gained momentum in Britain and the Scandinavian countries. In addition to improvements in working conditions and equal pay, liberationists fought for complete autonomy for women's bodies including their right to make their own decisions regarding contraception and abortion, and more independence in sexuality.
Groups which formed typically rejected hierarchical structure and operated on the basis of membership consensus, rejecting the idea that leadership conferred any expert status, and instead was simply another experience. They believed direct actions, which informed the public on the issues women faced, were more productive in changing thoughts than reforming laws. Their aims were to redesign society by changing the perception of women and their roles in society.
Though European liberationists were more aligned with socialist movements than liberationists in the groups which formed elsewhere, women in the WLM typically viewed class-based struggle as secondary to addressing patriarchy. Liberationists were resistant to any political system which ignored women entirely or relegated their issues to the sidelines. As groups operated autonomously without centralized organization, there was a fluidity in issues they addressed, but almost all members in the movement felt that unfettered access to education, jobs and child care were primary issues. Bringing issues to the public, which up to the time had been considered private matters, such as division of household labor, lesbianism, objectification of women, and sexual violence, was controversial and met with backlash from the media and public who labeled liberationists as man-haters.
There were robust liberationist movements in almost all Western European countries, though Greece, Portugal and Spain were late to form movements, as they emerged from dictatorship in the era. By the middle of the 1970s or early 1980s, as compromises were made by liberal reformers and governments on major target issues, most liberationist groups had disbanded or gone on to work on single focus issues.
Austria Though Austria was a conservative society, known as one of the most traditional in Western Europe, and has been characterized as having had no protests during the early 1970s when the Women's Liberation Movement was sweeping throughout the world, the characterization belies that women came together and began writing about and analyzing the status of women as second-class citizens from a feminist perspective by the late 1960s. One of the first writers to evaluate women's place in society in the period was Barbara Frischmuth who published Die Klosterschule (The Convent School) in 1968. The autobiographical novel examined the patriarchal structure of the convent school and its training of women to be submissive and passive. That same year, women participated in the student revolts, but were frustrated that they were confined to roles of serving coffee. The Arbeitskreis Emanzipation (Emancipation Working Group) formed with men and women in 1969 to discuss how women's equality could be furthered.
In 1971, a group known as the Arbeitskreis Emanzipation der Frau (Working Group for Women's Emancipation, AKE) was formed by the Social Democratic Party of Austria (). Their goals were to protest the idealization of mothers and eliminate barriers to contraception and abortion. On Mother's Day, 7 May 1971, 130 activists demonstrated on Vienna's Mariahilfer Straße to call attention to women's inequality and lack of autonomy to make their own life choices. Hosting a conference the following year in Vienna, the AKE brought women from the states of Salzburg, Tyrol, and Vorarlberg to join with Viennese women to strategize on how to create an autonomous women's movement. Their goals were to be free of the influence of political parties, working to mobilize women to fight for their own liberation, including control of their own bodies and economic choices. From this congress, Erica Fischer, Renate Fleißner, Renate Kohlbacher, Eva Kreisky, Mirl Ofner, Bodil Pedersen, Emmy Scholl, and Jane Wegscheider co-founded the Aktion Unabhängiger Frauen (Independent Women's Action, AUF) group, hosting the first group meeting in 1972 to discuss whether men should be allowed to participate in their group.
In December 1972 the AUF joined with women from the Communist Party of Austria () and the SPÖ calling for the abolition of section 144 of the criminal code which prohibited abortion. Gertrud Edlinger, Rosemarie Fischer, Irmtraud Goessler and Kreisky formed a committee Aktionskomitee zur Abschaffung des § 144 (Action committee for the abolition of section 144) to plan the protest to force a referendum. Using street theater, Erika Mis dressed as a convict with § 144 emblazoned on her apparel. Other actors posed as a doctor, judge and priest, and at the end of the presentation, Mis chopped the prison cage with an axe. A key characteristic of the AUF was its lack of organizational structure, opposition to hierarchy, and opposition to patriarchy within a classless society. Their aims were not focused on reforming laws, but in changing the way that women were perceived and allowed to participate in society. The movement grew rapidly in the early 1970s, but by the middle of the decade had developed many critics. Among them were the Socialist feminists, who believed that women's issues would be resolved if class inequality was eliminated and liberal reformers, who felt that by adding women's concerns to existing structures and organizations change would come about. By 1976, AUF dissolved and was reorganized as a women's center with a loose umbrella organizational structure to facilitate groups working on various focal issues regarding women.
Belgium
Inspired by the student demonstrations in France and the Women's Lib movement in the United States, renewed interest in feminism emerged in Belgium in the late 1960s. Supported by Chantal de Smet and Rose Proesmans, the Flemish extension of the Dutch Dolle Mina (Mad Minas) was effective in influencing public opinion by taking a humorous approach to the cause. In French-speaking Wallonia, a more socially oriented, worker-based movement known as Marie Mineur was founded by Jeanne Vercheval. In Brussels, at the Université libre de Bruxelles, a group known as Le Front de Libération des Femmes gained fame by invading the Miss Belgium event in May 1971, shouting, "Stop the beauty contest, we are not cattle!"
That same year, the journal Et ta sœur? (And your sister?) began publication. The following year, the journal, Le Petit livre rouge des femmes (The Little Red Book of Women) was published as an initiative of Marie Denis. She brought together a wide range of women from various schools of thought on feminism, including liberals, radicals, and socialists, as well as workers and intellectuals to compile their thoughts on their lives. The book became very influential, selling 15,000 copies in a few months. De Nieuwe Maand (The New Month) was another influential journal published in the period, which attempted to bridge the traditional divides between socialists and Catholics in Flanders. It was edited by Rita Mulier.
One of the work groups of De Nieuwe Maand focused on women's issues and in 1971, they hosted a regional symposium in Woumen to discuss the similarities women had regardless of their political and religious beliefs and the lack of response on issues effecting women from official organizations and government. This would become the autonomous group Vrouwen Overleg Komitee (Women's Consultation Committee, VOK), which was predominantly a Flemish organization. On 11 November 1972, Simone de Beauvoir, who had been invited to come to Belgium at the protest held in Paris on International Women's Day that year, came to Brussels to speak at a workshop, which they called Women's Day, organized by women from the Brussels-Capital Region, Flanders, and Wallonia. Based upon the success of that meeting, organizers of the VOK prepared a second Women's Day workshop in Antwerp and soon were hosting meetings throughout the country in various cities.
Out of these various meetings, the focus of the VOK was defined to encourage structural transformation of society, centered on issues such as employment and education. In an effort not to alienate their Catholic members, the organization struggled with its approach to abortion, as they required input and consensus from all women to launch policy directives. For the Dolle Minas and the Marie Mineurs, the main issues were initially free contraception and free abortion. The law forbidding access to contraceptives was withdrawn in 1972. In 1974, women of the VOK, preparing for celebrations of the United Nations' International Women's Year adopted the slogan the "Year of the Unemployed Woman" and focused their efforts on bringing awareness that changes needed were not for a year, but for women's lifetimes. The VOK finally adopted a policy of pro-choice on reproductive rights and while it lost some of its conservative members over the decision, there were affiliated group like the Catholic Vrouw and Maatschappij (Women and Society) which continued to work with the VOK.
In 1975, members of the VOK rallied at the Belgian Parliament's Palace of the Nation protesting the lack of women elected to office. They organized a campaign along with other women's groups to encourage women to vote and to vote for women candidates. By the end of the 1970s, tensions in the various women' groups operating in Belgium grew, as liberals wanted to focus on changing laws and analyzing women's position based on expert opinion. Liberationists, such as the members of the VOK, opposed moving away from the grass-roots nature of women's work and allowing all members to have a voice. By 1985, the cooperation and work of liberationists for women's autonomy, had given way to more formally-established, politically organized women's groups. The VOK though reduced in numbers was able to survive the change and by the 1990s, turned toward preventing the sexual abuse of women and the quality of women's lives. In 1990 liberals triumphed with partial decriminalization of abortion, and liberationists moved away from the issue. Members of the VOK joined the Women in Black movement to protest Yugoslavian war crimes.
France
As early as 1967, women began organizing in France through various political parties and one group, founded by Anne Zelensky and Jacqueline Feldman, who had been part of the Women's Democratic Movement, was the Féminin, Masculin, Avenir (Feminine Masculine Future, FMA), which allowed participation of both female and male activists. Interest in better conditions for women in France progressed in 1968, inspired by the civil unrest in May of that year. During the occupation of the Sorbonne, Feldman and Zelensky participated in events with the FMA, and realized that preference was given to male activists to speak and the women were shut out.