Fifty years of fighting sex discrimination: Undermining entrenched misogynies through recognition and everyday resistance

This article marks the 50th anniversary of the passing of the UK’s Sex Discrimination Act (1975). The UK offers an important historical case study of how such laws are, or are not, translated into practice. The success of the Act is mixed: there has been progress but much more needs to be done. In this study, we seek understanding of the mechanisms through which changes, albeit limited, have been made, with the aim of identifying strategies for continuing progress towards equalities. Using a feminist methodology of researching differently within an archive of memories, and the underutilized work of feminist psychoanalytical theorist Jessica Benjamin, we identify that women engaged in micro-revolutions involving everyday strategies of resistance. Over time, these accumulate and bring about changes on which we can continue to build. The article, first, contributes a theory of women’s agency as quiet revolutionaries; second, it pushes forward feminist theories of recognition; and, finally, it advances methods of researching differently.