Characterized as man-haters and radicals, the movement in North America gave way to more liberal reformers by the mid-1970s in the United States and Canada and by the early 1980s in Mexico.

An increase in university enrollment, sparked by the post-World War II baby boom, created a student body which believed that they could be catalysts for social change.

Rejecting authority and espousing participatory democracy as well as direct action, they promoted a wide agenda including civil rights, ethnic empowerment, and peace, as well as gay and women's liberation.

[2] The Canadian magazine, Chatelaine serialized Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique and published articles on birth control, modifications needed for the divorce laws, and other women's issues, making them public concerns.

[13][14] For example, Frances Wasserlein, a prominent LGBT and feminist activist who chronicled the history of the Abortion Caravan,[15] argued that to be involved in the WLM in Vancouver equated to being a socialist.

[19] Marge Hollibaugh and other liberationists organized the Western Regional Conference on Women's Liberation, which was held during the Thanksgiving weekend at the University of British Columbia campus to spread the word about the upcoming caravan.

and they supported changes to gain socio-economic and political equality, but also pressed for Quebec's autonomy and a recognition of the unpaid labor of women working in the home and in family businesses.

[30] In 1971, Lisa Balcer, called as a witness for the trial of Paul Rose in the kidnappings perpetrated by the Quebec Liberation Front the previous year, refused to testify because women were not allowed to serve as jurors.

[41][40] NOW's stated purpose was to work within established social and legal systems to gain equality, which clashed with radical feminists who believed that traditional power-structures had failed women and needed to be reformed.

[40] In 1964, an anonymous paper (later revealed to have been written by Elaine Delott Baker, Casey Hayden, Mary King, and Emmie Schrader), "The Position of Women in SNCC" (the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) was presented by Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson at the Waveland conference.

[42][43] The paper discussed the analogous relationship between sex and race discrimination within the context of the work environment and was seen as a critically important document for evaluating gender and women's issues.

[46] In Chicago, at a women's workshop held over Labor Day weekend that same year during the National Conference of New Politics (NCNP), Jo Freeman and Shulamith Firestone presented demands from the woman's caucus to the plenary session.

It was the "first women's liberation group in New York City",[52] and followed a radical feminist ideology that declared that "the personal is political" and "sisterhood is powerful"—formulations that arose from these consciousness-raising sessions.

The mimeographed booklet, which covered topics on sex, including abortion and orgasm, became the "most circulated source material on the New York women's liberation movement".

Politicos, who were tired of being labeled as man-haters and who believed the capitalist system was the root of the problem, formed the Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell (W.I.T.C.H), which focused on achieving equality through leftist politics.

protested the 1969 Miss America pageant[62] and the Redstockings demonstrated at a hearing of the New York State Joint Legislative Committee considering a reform of abortion law.

Angered that of the 15 experts called, 14 were men, the group held their own "public hearings" at the Washington Square Methodist Episcopal Church, allowing only women to "testify".

Within a year, the multi-racial group, renamed the Chicago Lesbian Liberation (CLL), had established regular consciousness-raising events, known as "Monday Night Meetings".

[70] The Female Liberation Newsletter, was founded that same year by Julie Morse and Rosina Richter in Minnesota, with the intent of centralizing publications on the varying views of the movement in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metro area.

[75] In March, CBS televised a series, with all-male correspondents, focused on radicals in the feminist movement, highlighting liberationists' tactics, rather than their underlying issues and portraying sexism as an unsubstantiated claim,[76] which should be treated with skepticism.

These various treatments, served to undermine the radical message, as on the one hand they were portrayed as extremists and on the other, their sexual politics were assimilated into the mainstream liberal feminist view to present a unified vision for women's equality.

The timing of her report was calculated, to curtail the view of advocacy, as it had been approved in 1969, but it did not air until other media outlets had covered the topic, paving the way for an objective presentation.

[83] For example, the Chicago Lesbian Liberation solved their meeting problems by gathering on a "slow night" at a local bar known as King's Ransom, which welcomed their multi-racial composition.

Most of them were run as collectives and spaces for consciousness-raising groups to meet in a non-competitive environment, where women could discuss the intersection of their personal lives, as well as politics and the economy.

They offered abortion and contraceptive counseling; personal and vocational consultations; ran a suicide hotline; published a monthly newsletter, The Women’s Center News; maintained a library of feminist writings; provided lectures on legal rights; and taught courses on self-defense.

Formed as a consciousness-raising group for lesbian feminists, it soon attracted members including Akasha Gloria Hull and Audre Lorde and began hosting retreats across the Northeastern United States.

Their ideas spread in 1972 after publication of an article "La situación de la mujer en México" (The Situation of Women in Mexico) was published in the magazine Punto Crítico and members began organizing events at universities in Chihuahua, Guanajuato, Jalapa, Morelia, San Luis Potosí, and Zacatecas, to discuss topics like child care centers, employment inequality, and reproductive rights.

The Lucha Feminista (Feminist Struggle), which formed in 1978, reformed into the Frente Nacional por los Derechos y la Liberación de las Mujeres (National Front for the Rights and the Liberation of Women, FNALIDM) in 1980, but it would dissolve a year after formation.

That same year, the remaining MLM members formed the Colectivo de Acción Solidaria con Empleadas Domésticas (Collective of Solidarity Action with Domestic Employees, CASED), to support women working as housekeepers.

[106] The Colectivo began publishing in 1977, a journal titled with the same name as their group to discuss the topics ranging from abortion to domestic obligation and including rape, sexuality, and prostitution.