The representations of feminists as political actors

Abstract

This thesis is an investigation of how second wave feminists challenged liberal democratic conceptions of the political and how this impacted on the ways they represented themselves as political actors. The study focuses on how feminists represented themselves in self-produced writings in New Zealand between 1970 and 1984. Feminists were concerned with representing the meanings and interests of women, which involved difficulties because representative systems have privileged dominant ‘male’ meanings and interests. Women of the second wave made use of existing discourses but, from these, managed to forge some new meaning/s. These meanings were contested and continually changing, although there were shared agreements which existed partially, temporarily, in particular contexts, and/or in relation to specific political actions. There was not a real feminism or real feminists waiting to be discovered, nor was there a simple progression from ‘equality’ to ‘difference’ based feminism. Feminists were engaged in a crucial process of invention and re-invention which is ongoing and of which this work is intended to provide a clearer understanding. Such understanding contributes to critical appreciations of the social construction of systems of representation, social movement activity and of current understandings of what is considered political in Western liberal democracies.