The women in print movement (WIP) was an international effort by second-wave feminists to establish autonomous communications networks created by and for women. The movement encouraged women to write and publish their works in feminist periodicals which were edited by women, printed by feminist presses, and distributed by informal networks and feminist bookstores. WIP emerged in the 1960s out of the women's liberation movement, a branch of radical feminism that viewed patriarchy as a hierarchical, systemic issue that could not be reformed. Many radical feminists were also feminist separatists and lesbian feminists who used the WIP movement to create women-centered economies and cultures.Travis, "The Women in Print Movement," pp. 276-280.
The movement was decentralized and diverse, with hundreds of feminist periodicals and presses operating at the local and regional levels.Beins, Liberation in Print, p. 7.Harker, The Lesbian South. Between 1968 and 1973, over 560 feminist periodicals were established.Travis, "The Women in Print Movement," p. 278. Although most English language scholarship focuses on WIP in the United States and United Kingdom, there were also feminist publications and women's presses in Australia, France, Canada, South Africa, Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland, New Zealand, and India.Huisman and van Vught, "Women in Print."Luker, "Women into Print."Murray, Mixed Media, p. 5.
Women in the WIP movement used their publications for consciousness raising, reclaiming and reprinting earlier women's writings, self-expression, education, and movement coordination. Feminist presses provided an outlet for women's writings without the censorship and gatekeeping of traditional publishers. WIP presses and printers also gave women practical and professional skills in writing, editing, typesetting, and binding. Feminist bookstores were spaces where feminists could meet, host events, and find publications that were difficult or impossible to find in mainstream bookstores. Many WIP periodicals, presses, and bookstores operated as non-hierarchical collectives that relied on amateur and volunteer labor.Adams, "Built Out of Books."
Most WIP presses and periodicals were short-lived due to many factors, notably the challenges of sustaining anti-capitalist enterprises that required significant resources such as equipment, supplies, and labor. However, WIP proved influential in the women's liberation movement and popular understandings of women, patriarchy, and feminism.Seager, "Overview: The 'Women in Print' Movement and Its Status Today." Literary and communications scholar Simone Murray has called the mainstream success of feminist publishing enterprises the “most significant development in late twentieth-century book publishing."Murray, Mixed Media, p. 5. Publishers that survived into the 21st century include Feminist Press, Virago Press, and Naiad Press. Extant WIP periodicals include Sinister Wisdom and 13th Moon.
Predecessors
First-wave feminists used the written word to organize suffragist activities and influence public opinion about women's rights in the 19th and 20th centuries. In 1888, Australian feminist Louisa Lawson founded The Dawn, a journal with all female editors and printers.Luker, "Women into Print," p. 125.
Another predecessor of WIP was Vice Versa, a lesbian magazine founded by Lisa Ben in 1947. At the time, obscenity laws forbade gay and lesbian content from being published and circulated, so Ben used her office typewriter at RKO Studios to compose, edit, and print Vice Versa. She typically made ten copies of each issue, gave them to friends, and asked them to pass the magazine along to other lesbians in their circles. Ben anticipated the later WIP movement's focus on volunteer labor, pilfered office supplies, and informal circulation networks.Klinger, Paper Uprisings, pp. 7-8.
The Ladder was a lesbian magazine published by the Daughters of Bilitis and a precursor to the WIP movement. It was assimilationist rather than separatist, but Barbara Grier's lesbian book reviews in The Ladder created an outlet for discussing and sharing lesbian literature, including pulp fiction which was widely denigrated as "trash." Grier later became editor of The Ladder under contentious circumstances, separated it from the Daughters of Bilitis, and founded Naiad Press.Harker, The Lesbian South, p. 19.
Causes Feminists were critical of the mainstream press and alternative New Left media, which rarely printed women's writings, relegated female staff to typist roles, and published sexist stories which were dismissive of the emerging women's liberation movement. In the early 1970s, women staged takeovers of several publications, including the Los Angeles Free Press, Great Speckled Bird, and Rat. The increasing corporatization and monopolization of the mainstream press also concerned women's liberationists who wanted their writings to circulate in free and independent outlets.Beins, Liberation in Print, pp. 17-19. Second-wave feminists believed that publishing was an inherently political act and that women had to take publishing into their own hands to ensure their voices were heard.Murray, Mixed Media, p. 2.
Women encountered censorship when attempting to have their writings published or printed privately. In 1971, the Ain't I a Woman? collective in Iowa City could not find a commercial printer willing to print informational material about women's health, including instructional images demonstrating cervical self-examinations. This led to the creation of the Iowa City Women's Press in 1972. Beins and Enszer, "'We Couldn't Get Them Printed'", p. 186. There was increasing demand for accessible resources about women's health, particularly after the introduction of the birth control pill in the United States in 1960. Information about the pill was limited and could be withheld from single women, because Griswold v. Connecticut only established the right to use contraceptives without government interference for married couples. The rights of unmarried people to possess contraceptives were only established in 1972 with Eisenstadt v. Baird.Flannery, Feminist Literacies, p. 9.
Many traditional publishers and commercial printers also refused to print lesbian material. After June Arnold could not find a publisher for her novel The Cook and the Carpenter, she founded Daughters, Inc. and published it herself.Harker, The Lesbian South, p. 31.Luker, "Women into Print," p. 130. Ideological tensions due to the gay/straight split within feminism also influenced the creation of many lesbian publications. For example, Marilyn Webb founded Off Our Backs in 1969 after she was "purged" from D.C. Women's Liberation for being a lesbian. The Furies Collective and its newspaper were also founded by lesbian separatists who had unsuccessfully attempted to form coalitions with straight feminists.Adams, "Built Out of Books," pp. 132-133.
The growing popularity of offset printing and affordability of mimeograph machines were also major factors in the growth and spread of WIP. Mimeograph machines allowed women to self-publish large quantities of materials without much time, labor, or technical expertise.Beins, "A Revolution in Ephemera," p. 47. Dale Spender, Australian feminist and founder of Pandora Press, believed that women were only allowed greater influence in publishing beginning in the 1970s because this coincided with the rise of computer technology. Print culture's association with women led to the pink ghettoization of print publishing.Murray, Mixed Media, p. 213.
Origins
Kathryn Thoms Flannery has named 1968 as the milestone year for identifiably separate feminist publications. WIP periodicals founded in 1968 included Lilith, No More Fun and Games, Voice of the Women's Liberation Movement, and Notes from the First Year.Flannery, Feminist Literacies, p. 27.
WIP contributors were influenced by contemporary social and countercultural movements, including the civil rights movement, the New Left, and radical democracy organizations such as Students for a Democratic Society and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. WIP's emphasis on amateur, DIY aesthetics and collectivism also had roots in anarchist thought.Flannery, Feminist Literacies, p. 27.Adams, "Built Out of Books," pp. 114-116.Beins and Enszer, "'We Couldn't Get Them Printed,'" p. 205.
A key event in the movement was the first Women in Print Conference, which took place in Omaha, Nebraska in August 1976. 132 female editors, printers, publishers, and booksellers attended, representing 80 collectives and organizations. The conference was organized by June Arnold of Daughters, Inc., Coletta Reid of Diana Press, and Charlotte Bunch of Quest: A Feminist Quarterly. Reid and Bunch were former members of the Furies Collective. The conference was separatist from the outset, with attendance limited to WIP organizations which did not have men working in any part of their operations, though an exception was made for "Third World women working with men on Third World projects." Travis, "The Women in Print Movement," pp. 179-180.
After the conference, Carol Seajay founded Feminist Bookstores Newsletter (FBN), which changed its name to Feminist Bookstore News in 1984. Seajay edited, printed, and distributed FBN as a one-woman operation until 2000. FBN had a comparatively large international circulation and became the definitive trade publication for feminist publishers and booksellers. Women in the movement used FBN to solicit submissions for their periodicals, share news, publicize new publications, and ask for advice about the book trade.Travis, "The Women in Print Movement," pp. 287-291.
Women involved with WIP also networked and shared resources at events such as the International Feminist Bookfair and OutWrite conferences, which were held semi-regularly in the 1980s and 1990s.Huisman and van Vught, "Women in Print," p. 137.Klinger, Paper Uprisings, p. 4.
Aims and methods The movement adopted the slogan "freedom of the press belongs to those who own the press," which was adapted from an A. J. Liebling quote.Smith, "A Press of Our Own Kitchen Table."Klinger, Paper Uprisings, p. 27. WIP's primary goal was to build an autonomous feminist publishing network where women's writings were published, printed, and circulated by women and woman-centered groups. Women in WIP accomplished this by establishing periodicals, publishing houses, print shops, and bookstores. Many women in the movement believed that feminist print enterprises should shun male collaborators, traditional presses, and mainstream publishing norms and marketing strategies. Several different strands of thought contributed to widespread feminist suspicion of the corporate and commercial press.Murray, Mixed Media, p. 137. However, there were disagreements about how strictly to interpret these separatist principles. Some WIP groups worked with men, non-feminist organizations, and mainstream publishers for pragmatic or ideological reasons.Smith, "A Press of Our Own Kitchen Table."Gilley, "Feminist Publishing/Publishing Feminism," pp. 24-30.
WIP encouraged women to become involved in publishing networks, especially if they had little experience with writing, editing, or journalism. As a result, many feminist periodicals had an unrefined quality, often printed on cheap paper, stapled by hand, and featuring handwritten text and illustrations. Typographical errors, unusual layouts, and formatting inconsistencies were common. However, these amateurish features were often attractive to novice writers and editors who were encouraged to see a wide array of texts being printed and taken seriously in the WIP community. Some publications deliberately cultivated a DIY, lowbrow aesthetic in direct opposition to the male press.Beins, Liberation in Print, pp. 66-67.Forster, "Spreading the Word," p. 814.