The Tyranny of Structurelessness

About this book

"The Tyranny of Structurelessness" is an influential essay by American feminist Jo Freeman that concerns power relations within radical feminist collectives. The essay, inspired by Freeman's experiences in a 1960s women's liberation group, reflected on the experiments of the feminist movement in resisting the idea of leaders and even discarding any structure or division of labor. As Hilary Wainwright wrote in Z Magazine, Freeman described how "this apparent lack of structure too often disguised an informal, unacknowledged and unaccountable leadership that was all the more pernicious because its very existence was denied". As a solution, Freeman suggests formalizing the existing hierarchies in the group and subjecting them to democratic control.