Feminist separatism

Feminist separatism is a strategy or position advocating women’s separation from men or male-dominated institutions to build autonomy and women-centered communities.

Women-only spaces: Spaces restricted to women, often created for safety, solidarity, or shared activity. They put separatist principles into practice through boundaries on participation.
Second-wave feminism: A broad feminist movement, especially prominent from the 1960s through the 1980s, focused on social, cultural, and legal inequality. Separatism developed within the movement’s debates over organizing and women’s autonomy.
Feminist integrationism: A feminist approach that seeks equal participation within existing institutions rather than withdrawal from them. It directly contrasts separatist withdrawal with efforts to change institutions from within.
Michigan Womyn's Music Festival: An annual women’s music festival held in Michigan from 1976 to 2015. Its long history made a women-centered cultural gathering a prominent site of separatist practice and debate.
Consciousness-raising: A feminist practice in which participants share personal experiences to identify and analyze structural oppression. Women-centered discussion helped turn private experiences into collective analysis and political action.
Radical feminism: A feminist current that analyzes patriarchy as a foundational system of social power. Its account of patriarchy as pervasive helped motivate withdrawal from male-dominated institutions.
Intersectionality: A framework for analyzing how overlapping systems of power shape distinct experiences of oppression. It challenges universal accounts of women’s experience that can underpin separatist organizing.
Olivia Records: An independent women’s music record label founded in Washington, D.C., in 1973. The label built a women-led cultural institution outside the mainstream recording industry.
Lesbian feminism: A feminist politics that centers lesbian experience and challenges heterosexual norms and male dominance. Some separatists treated lesbian relationships as a way to withdraw intimacy and allegiance from men.
New York Radical Feminists: A radical feminist organization founded in New York City in 1969. Its organizing emerged amid disputes about women-only political groups and radical feminist strategy.

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Fourth-wave feminismCompared with: Its organizing model contrasts with campaigns that build broad, public networks through digital platforms.