The women's liberation movement in Asia was a feminist movement that started in the late 1960s and continued into the 1970s. Women's liberation movements in Asia sought to redefine women's relationships to the family and the way that women expressed their sexuality. Women's liberation in Asia also dealt with particular challenges that made the liberation movement unique in different countries.
Several countries were influenced by Western women's liberation movements, and in the case of China, ideas from the Cultural Revolution helped shape women's liberation in the West. Many Asian feminists had to straddle the line between being feminist or being "Asian." In India, the caste system affected the way that women's liberation was approached in that gender and class could rarely be separated. Similarly in Israel, the plight of Palestinian women became important in molding the views of oppression. In Japan, the movement focused on sexuality rather than equality, in an attempt to gain recognition for women's autonomy and freedom to choose their own social roles. In Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan, the liberationist movement was inspired by the worldwide movement for women's liberation and typically combined the fight against sexism with the struggle against colonialism and economic exploitation. Turkey came to the women's liberation movement later than other countries and was influenced by feminists from other countries and also by Islamic women. Turkey's struggle for women's liberation was centered around the issue of domestic violence.
China Women's status in China during the twentieth century was tied closely to the Communist Revolution there and women's social status rose quickly. Initially, Chinese people believed that the Communist Revolution would end patriarchy. During the Cultural Revolution, women were celebrated through slogans like "Women Hold Up Half the Sky", while simultaneously they were discouraged from discussing gender issues, which were seen as "reactionary". In the 1970s, new institutions that benefited and were staffed by women were created, including cafeterias, kindergartens, and nurseries. Women's rights were managed by the state itself and there was no independent feminist movement during the period. However, many of the ideas created during the revolution went on to influence women's movements in the West, as radical feminists often were politically aligned with the left. In the polarized camps of the Cold War period, socialists turned from emulating Soviet communism in the wake of Stalinist purges and invasions. Western feminists after 1960 based key ideals on Maoist theory. Slogans such as "workers of the world unite" turned into "women of the world unite" and key features like consciousness-raising and egalitarian consensus-based policies "were inspired by similar techniques used in China".
India Politics in India became radicalized in the late 1960s with numerous special-interest groups forming to address corruption and the economic crisis brought about by destructive development. By the 1970s, drought in the Maharashtra state worsened conditions for many. Peaking in 1974 with encouragement from the Navnirman Movement, women in diverse classes began to engage in direct actions to challenge leadership. The idea of "women's liberation" became a "respectable topic" in India starting in the 1970s. Women began to see that legal protections were doing very little to change the reality of their lives. Rural women who lived in poverty began to see themselves as doubly disadvantaged: both economically and through their lower social status. Women in lower castes, such as Dalits, realized that they had to fight a class battle, as well as a battle against sexism. However, most women participating in the women's liberation movement in the 1970s were middle class or part of the upper caste, and were urban and educated.
The Women's Federation of Kerala had grown to 100,000 members by 1970 and the Ganatantrik Mahila Samiti (Democratic Women's Organization) held a state conference in April 1973 in West Bengal that drew 121,632 members from nearly every district. In 1974, organizations such as the Women's Anti-Price-Rise movement in Maharashtra, the Progressive Organization of Women (POW) of Hyderabad, and the Stree Mukti Sanghatana of Bombay were formed, with women joining these leftist organizations in greater numbers. The first Democratic Women's Union conference was held in Tamil Nadu in December 1974. Student unrest and protest in Delhi sparked women to create their own human rights movement.
Creating small groups in such places as Bangalore, Bombay, Delhi, Hyderabad, Madras, and Pune, the women's groups that formed in the period were averse to authoritarian structure and utilized a collective approach to decision-making. To challenge patriarchal power in personal and political spheres, they published and reproduced articles from other countries on Women's Liberation developments throughout the world. These loosely affiliated groups networked by circulating their publications in English, as well as regional languages. In Maharashtra, differing from other areas, meetings crossed caste and class divides, including students, laborers, blue collar workers, and white collar employees. Focusing on direct action, women in these groups protested official policy in various ways. For example, an influential street performance Om Swaha enacted by Stree Mukti Sanghatana members became iconic, galvanizing women to work against dowry deaths.
Publication of the report Towards Equality in 1974 and 1975 as part of the United Nations survey on the Status of Women, revealed that women's participation in economic and political life had declined in post-Independent India. Unlike the western counterparts of the WLM, sexuality was a taboo topic in the era, though sexual violence became a focus. As such, lesbians were part of the movement, but sexual orientation was largely a private matter. In like manner, liberationists were characterized as disruptive to class-based activists who firmly believed that elimination of class differences would solve women's problems. In 1981, a group Sachetana was formed by activists in Calcutta with the goal of raising the consciousness of its members and other women. Their initial public protest was production of a play, Meye Dile Shajiye, written by member Malini Bhattacharya to protest selling brides. Unaffiliated with any political party, the group became a safe space for women of varying beliefs and political ties to openly express and discuss issues criticizing government policy and patriarchy.
After The Emergency ended in 1977 in India, membership in the women's movement swelled, which predominantly consisted up to that time of the organized, disciplined, hierarchically structured, party-affiliated groups or the leaderless, inclusive and chaotic, but autonomous groups loosely affiliated with the political left. The 1980 Forum Against Rape, held in Bombay at Cama Hall, marked a point where activists realized that multi-dimensional struggle focusing on both legal reform and raising awareness was necessary to combat systemic issues and different factions of feminists began to come together to solve issues.
Israel The women's liberation movement in Israel was initiated in the early 1970s by two American immigrants at the University of Haifa, Marcia Freedman and Marylin Safir who had both been involved in feminist activities in the United States. Seminars they held in Haifa on how women suffered from a male-dominated society quickly inspired radical activities in Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem. The first liberationist group formed in 1972, spawning formation of consciousnesses-raising groups which used direct actions as a means of addressing women's issues. Women's studies emerged which highlighted the historical contributions of Israeli women. Freedman commented: "It really wasn't that difficult translating American feminism to Israel, with many of the same issues: the ability of women to work outside the house, abortion and issues of women controlling their bodies, although on Israel a very common response was that no women's movement was needed because Israeli women were already 'liberated'."
In 1972, the radical Nilahem movement (based on an acronym meaning Women for a Renewed Society) was formed, attracting interest throughout the country with stands against legal inequality and the suffering of the Palestinians. During the 1973 Yom Kippur War, women found themselves excluded from the civilian administration, and both the military and war production efforts, being relegated to treating the wounded and supporting families. Though short in duration, the conflict brought into focus an awareness of the segregated roles of women and men in society. In that same year, Freedman became the first openly feminist member of the Knesset, supporting the Civil Rights Movement. Jerusalem liberationists saw in the movement a way to fight against all oppression, including that of the poor and Palestinians. They led actions over poor wages, women working at night, and violence against women, as well as the right to control decisions over reproduction, as did activists in Haifa and Tel Aviv.
Women's centers sprang up in metropolitan areas and by 1975, translated anthologies of US and European texts were appearing regularly in Israel. Various feminist publications appeared in the mid-1970s, including Women as Human Beings by Shulamit Aloni. In 1976, WLM members, led by Freeman, made headlines when they invaded a gynecological conference at the Hilton Tel Aviv to protest the position on abortion and were evicted by police. In 1977, the first women's shelter in Israel was founded in Haifa and the first rape crisis center was opened in Tel Aviv. That same year, a feminist publishing group The Second Sex was created and the lesbian liberationist group Aleph was founded, which led to the hosting of the first lesbian feminist conference the following year in Beersheba. By the end of the 1970s, the movement was fracturing in Israel and Aleph disbanded in 1980. The feminist periodical Nogah began publication in 1980.
Japan In Japan, the woman's liberation movement was known as ūman ribu, marking a new social and political direction for women in Japan. The name ūman ribu was itself a transliteration of English for "women's lib" and was meant to show "both the activists' solidarity with other women's liberation movements around the world and their specificity as a new Japanese women's movement". Ūman ribu differed from Western women's liberation movements in that the goals were not about equal rights, but more focused on women's roles in Japan and "called for liberation from their sex," which is known as sei no kaihō.
Women in the movement felt that dealing with sexual desire (seiyoku) was important and defining for the movement itself. Women such as Iwatsuki Sumie (also known as Asatori Sumie), wrote about menstruation taboos. She was also instrumental in creating women's spaces and was known for her advocacy of lesbian relationships. Activist Tomoko Yonezu started Thought Group SEX, which also explored disability and sexual liberation. Sexual liberation for Tomoko and Tanaka didn't mean "free sex" (furii sekkusu), but instead focused on a liberation of women's sexuality. In addition, the sense of autonomy over their own bodies meant that ūman ribu activist opposed efforts to restrict abortion and which emphasized creating a society where women "want to give birth".