Feminist movements and ideologies
Radical feminism considers the male-controlled capitalist hierarchy, which it describes as sexist, as the defining feature of women's oppression. Radical feminists believe that women can free themselves only when they have done away with what they consider an inherently oppressive and dominating patriarchal system. Radical feminists feel that there is a male-based authority and power structure and that it is responsible for oppression and inequality, and that, as long as the system and its values are in place, society will not be able to be reformed in any significant way. Some radical feminists see no alternatives other than the total uprooting and reconstruction of society in order to achieve their goals.
Women's liberation movement in North America
By the late 1970s, the Marxist and liberationists' alliance fractured in part because of media characterization of radicals in the grass-roots movement as "crazy", but in part because the radical grass-roots groups had difficulty mobilizing women under abstract theories. Bonnie Kreps, who wrote "Radical Feminism 1" which was published in 1973 in the anthology "Radical Feminism: The Book" portrayed Canadian feminists as falling into three categories: socialist feminists, who were opposed to capitalism; liberal feminists, who were concerned with equal rights and equal pay; and radical feminists who focused on "the oppression of women as women" or sexism. Activists who had been involved in the WLM turned their efforts toward violence against women, when the liberal feminists gained the dominant position and public perception that legal change to the existing systems were the legitimate concerns of the women's movement. In 2007, Marjolaine Péloquin, published a history of the movement in Quebec, "En prison pour la cause des femmes: la conquête du banc des jurés" (In prison for the cause of women: the conquest of the jury box), critically analyzing the short-lived but significant impact of the FLF.