November 2000

“The Personal is Political” was a slogan that emerged from the cultural changes of the 1960s. It summarized the demand to take the realms of private life seriously as matters of political concern. In place of the traditional separation of public and private, the blurring of these spheres of life was at the root of many of the liberal and liberating movements of that era. The phrase first emerged from women’s liberation. While the old school maintained that the private sphere of women’s lives—including choices about work, marriage and children—was not even grist for public talk, the new consciousness found political consequences shot through all these decisions.

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