Hidden Agendas: Theory, Politics and Experience in the Women's Movement by Elizabeth Wilson with Angela Weir

Hidden Agendas: Theory, Politics and Experience in the Women's Movement is a non-fiction book by Elizabeth Wilson (with Angela Weir) which was published by Tavistock Publications in 1986. 

From the back cover: 

Between 1972 and 1982 Elizabeth Wilson wrote a series of articles, many of which have proved highly influential. Most of them originally appeared in feminist magazines and journals and reflect a particular view of the development of feminist and left politics throughout the 1970s. They are collected together in Hidden Agendas accompanied by a new introductory essay which assesses and reflects on the experience presented in the various essays.

On the one hand, in the article 'The British Women's Movement' written jointly with Angela Weir, the authors argue for a development rather than a critique of Marxist theory as a basis for an analysis of women's position in contemporary capitalism; on the other hand, in her introduction, Elizabeth Wilson argues that 'feminism' contains within it at least two rather different and divergent projects.

The essays engage with some of the most influential writings of the past fifteen years of the women's movement - psychoanalysis, Marxism 'Beyond the Fragments'. and thinking of the 'new left'. They also attempt a perspective on the issue of sexuality - arguably one of the core, but also one of the most difficult and contested themes of the contemporary women's movement.

The author: Elizabeth Wilson is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Applied Social Studies at the Polytechnic of North London.

Table of Contents


Acknowledgements

Part I - Introduction
1. Women, heroines, and feminist intellectuals

Part II - Feminist Politics and Socialist Ideas
2. A reply to Selma James (with Angela Weir)
3. Libertarianism: ideas in the void
4. Beyond the ghetto: thoughts on Beyond the Fragments
5. How not to reinvent capitalism: socialist welfare in the eighties
6. The British women's movement (with Angela Weir)

Part III - Women's Experience and Feminist Consciousness
7. Gayness and liberalism
8. Psychoanalysis: psychic law and order?
9. Forbidden love
10. Yesterday's heroines: on rereading Lessing and de Beauvoir
11. The Barnard Sexuality Conference

References
Name index
Subject index