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The Channel 4 documentary, Feminists and FlourBombs, looks at the lives of five women who protested at the 1970 Miss World competition. In Britain in the 1970s, women were beginning to organise on a national scale for the first time. They had high hopes that they would change the way they lived and worked. Pressure to gain equality in the workplace was coupled with attempts at ways of living that challenged the nuclear family in which they were relegated to the kitchen. The Miss World competition, where women were judged purely according to their looks, was a natural target for their protest. They discovered more powerful enemies, though, when they came up against male-dominated state institutions, including the courts. Through the eyes of five women who participated in the protest, we can trace the history of feminist thought and action since then. Many of the attitudes that prevailed in 1970 have changed irrevocably, yet equality for the sexes remains an elusive goal. • In our special essay, former editor of Spare Rib, Sue O'Sullivan, describes the discussions, debates and battles that made Women's Liberation such a vibrant movement. |