Alliance Against Women's Oppression (U.S.)

In August of 1980, the Alliance Against Women's Oppression (AAWO) was formed out of a process of transformation and struggle begun in the Third World Women's Alliance (TWWA) in late 1979. The newly formed organization resolved to focus its organizing activities primarily on the struggle for women's rights and equality and against the racialized, gendered, classed sexism of the developed North. The AAWO announced itself as a multi-racial alliance of lesbian and straight women. Women of color lesbian issues that had been stubbornly ignored by the mainstream women's movement were part of the political line of the AAWO.

Continuing work initiated and produced by the TWWA, the AAWO persistently clarified the intersectionality of race, gender, class, and sexuality in its political analysis of capitalism and the conditions of women in the transnational economy. AAWO work areas included infant mortality, reproductive rights, sterilization abuse, Central American and African Women's liberation struggles, and Lesbian and Gay rights. The AAWO also continued the political education work of International Women's Day (IWD). AAWO members produced discussion and position papers for AAWO members and the public. AAWO had chapters in Boston, New York, Louisville, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.

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