Carol Hanisch facts for kids

Carol Hanisch (born in 1942) is an American activist who supports radical feminism. This means she believes in big changes to make society fair for women. She was an important member of groups like New York Radical Women and Redstockings. She is well-known for helping to make the phrase "the personal is political" popular. This phrase means that problems people think are just their own are often connected to bigger issues in society and politics.

Carol Hanisch also helped plan the 1968 Miss America protest. During this protest, she and three other women hung a banner that said "Women's Liberation" over a balcony at the Miss America Pageant, which got a lot of attention.

Early life and activism

Carol Hanisch grew up on a farm in Iowa, a state in the U.S. She worked as a reporter in Des Moines. In 1965, she was inspired by reports about the Freedom Summer movement and decided to join the Delta Ministry in Mississippi. This group worked for civil rights.

While there, she met Anne Braden and Carl Braden, who were leaders of the Southern Conference Education Fund (SCEF). They hired her to manage their office in New York.

Working for women's rights

By early 1968, Carol Hanisch made sure the SCEF offices could be used for weekly meetings of the New York Radical Women. This became their main meeting place until the group ended in the early 1970s.

The personal is political

In 1970, her most famous essay, "The Personal is Political," was published. In this essay, Carol Hanisch explained that many problems people face in their personal lives are actually connected to bigger political or social issues. She wrote that "personal problems are political problems" and that people need to work together to find solutions.

Meeting Ground online

Carol Hanisch also helped start and now co-edits an online publication called Meeting Ground online with Kathy Scarbrough. This publication aims to be a place where people can share and discuss ideas about how to improve the women's liberation movement and other movements working for fairness for everyone.

Influences on her work

In 1996, Carol Hanisch gave a speech about how the Chinese Cultural Revolution influenced the women's liberation movement. She mentioned that books like Fanshen by William H. Hinton and the ideas of Mao Zedong helped shape the women's movement in the 1960s. She said that ideas from the Black Liberation movement and Maoist ideas about sharing personal stories and reflecting on one's own actions helped develop the idea of consciousness raising groups in American feminism. These groups allowed women to share their experiences and realize they were not alone in their struggles.

Speaking up for feminist ideas

In 2013, Carol Hanisch, along with Kathy Scarbrough, Ti-Grace Atkinson, and Kathie Sarachild, started an open statement called "Forbidden Discourse: The Silencing of Feminist Criticism of 'Gender'." This statement was signed by many radical feminists from different countries. They wanted to express their concern about how some feminist ideas were being shut down or criticized, making it hard for people to have open discussions about different viewpoints within feminism.

See also

In Spanish: Carol Hanisch para niños