Making of Sisterhood is Powerful

● Published in 1970 during the second wave of feminism

● Splintering from liberal feminism
● Barriers to publishing
○ Many of the barriers that Robin faced to actually publish the anthology reflected
the problems that she was fighting for
■ All of the people in positions of power were men and they gave Robin a
hard time publishing anthology and forced her to change the title
■ The time commitment that the writer's had to invest ruined some
relationships
● Women had a place in the house and that role wasn’t being
fulfilled to the extent some spouses wanted when they were
working on the anthology
● Had to stop and delay the anthology when life happened in ways
that disproportionately affect women: divorce, pregnancy,
childbirth, abortion, hysterectomy
● The personal is political
○ Women’s liberation is based on the personal experience and accounts of women.
Because all women share similar experience it is political.
○ “Women’s liberation is the first radical movement to base its politics--in fact,
create it’s politics--out of concrete personal experiences. We learned that those
experiences are not our private hang-ups. They are shared by every woman, and
are therefore political” (Morgan xx).

Important Concepts from Sisterhood is Powerful

● Radicalism
○ A splinter from liberal feminism
● Across Identities
○ Robin Morgan and the writers were intentional about making their movement
inclusive. To do so they included multiple different voices from different groups
to reflect on the shared and the different experiences of being a part of a group
and how that experience changes when an individual is at the intersection of
multiple oppressed identities.
○ “It is also the first movement that has the potential to cut across all class, race,
age, economic, and geographic barriers--since women in every group must play
essentially the same role, albeit with different sets and costumes: the multiple
roles of wife, mother, sexual object, baby producer, “supplementary-income
statistic,” helpmate, nurturer, hostess, etc” (Morgan xx).
○ “Until recently, the movement seemed to be composed mostly of young white
women from middle-class backgrounds (more about this later). But this is
 beginning to change, partly because the general consciousness about the
oppression of women is spreading through all groups and classes, and partly
because the women’s movement has set itself the task of analyzing divisions that
keep us apart from each other, and is working very concretely to break down
those divisions” (Morgan xxix).

● Consciousness Raising
○ Also referred to as “bitch sessions”
○ Demanded by black feminist
○ Meetings that occured across the United States where women gathered and
discussed topics and questions pertaining to their experience as women
○ These conversations were intended to get a sense of how women as individuals
and a group felt about the topic/question so that a collective feeling could be
found and action could be written up
○ Used two systems to help facilitate these meetings:
■ The Lot System
● Used to delegate responsibilities
■ The Disc System
● While at the meeting, each individual would be given a certain
number of discs
● One disc would have to be given up in order to speak and
contribute to a conversation
● This system was used to help allow those who might be talked over
or be afraid to speak the space to speak and voice their experiences
and opinions