Summary: What a Pulitzer Prize-winning play at Berkeley Rep reveals about women’s liberation, family patterns, and the unfinished business of change.
I recently attended a performance of Liberation at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, and it brought back memories of the women’s movement in the 1970s. Yes, I was a part of those days, honoring Gloria Steinem and quoting Betty Friedan’s book, The Feminine Mystique. I also particularly loved Bella Abzug’s quote that I used in my own book GUTSY: How Women Leaders Make Change(opens in new tab): “It’s time to bring women down from the pedestal and up from the laundry room.”
Watching the women talk, sitting in a circle in Philadelphia those many years ago, I was struck by how many of the questions those women were asking are still being asked today. Have we really made progress? Or are we simply repeating the same struggles with different language?
The big question is, are we still waiting for liberation?
Watching the play reminded me of something I have spent more than 35 years exploring. We can change laws, challenge institutions, and shatter glass ceilings, but unless we also change the patterns we inherit, we risk recreating the very systems we fought to escape. That is what makes this play so timely.
Written by Bess Wohl, winner of the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play, Liberation takes us back to Ohio in the early 1970s. There, a group of women gathers in the basement of a recreation center. No fancy offices, corporate sponsorships, or social media campaigns. Just women talking. And what conversations they have!
They question marriage, motherhood, careers, sexuality, money, independence, and the expectations that have defined their lives. Some are angry, or frightened, or funny. Some disagree passionately. Yet something extraordinary happens. They begin to realize that what they believed were individual failures may actually be part of a much larger social pattern. And that realization changes everything.
The Woman Who Brought These Voices Back to Life
Bess Wohl has accomplished something remarkable. Rather than writing a history lesson about famous feminist leaders, she brings us into the lives of ordinary women who helped make extraordinary change possible. Wohl grew up surrounded by the women’s movement. Her mother worked at Ms. magazine, and Wohl participated in demonstrations as a child.
Years later, she began asking questions about her mother’s generation. What did those women hope to accomplish? What did they sacrifice? What did they gain? And perhaps most importantly, what did they pass along to their daughters?
The play moves between the 1970s and the present, as a daughter attempts to understand her mother’s choices and the contradictions of the feminist revolution. That intergenerational perspective is what especially captured my attention because it connects directly to my own work.
For decades, I have taught that the family is our first organization. It is where we learn about authority, conflict, loyalty, competition, approval, power, and belonging. Long before we enter a boardroom, we have already learned certain rules. Who gets to speak? Or who must remain silent? How are decisions made? Who sacrifices? Where is credit given? And who is expected to keep everyone happy?
Early Lessons Become Patterns
Then we grow up, enter organizations, take leadership positions, and often repeat them without realizing what we are doing. Consider a woman who grew up watching her mother sacrifice everything to keep the family together. She may become a highly successful executive, yet still feel compelled to rescue everyone on her team.
A personal note: When asked why I went on to get a PhD during a time when most women still spent their extra time at PTA meetings, I said: “All you have to do is have your father die suddenly when you are fourteen and watch your mother, with no skills outside the home, work part-time at Macy’s to decide to have a career that will pay more than minimum wage.”
There are others who watched mothers remain silent in the face of conflict, and may continue as adults to avoid difficult conversations. Another may reject her mother’s submissiveness so fiercely that she becomes controlling herself. Different behaviors. Same underlying struggle.
Patterns change costume, but the old script keeps playing.(opens in new tab)
Liberation Is More Than Having Choices
One of the most compelling questions raised by the play is whether having more choices necessarily makes us freer. Women today have opportunities that many of our mothers and grandmothers could barely imagine. We lead corporations, build businesses, manage investments, enter professions once closed to us, and make decisions about our lives that previous generations fought to secure.
These achievements matter enormously. Yet how many women still feel guilty about choosing a career? How many successful women believe they must be perfect at everything? Who continue to carry responsibility for everyone else’s emotional well-being? And how many women in leadership positions find themselves competing with other women rather than collaborating?
We have expanded the possibilities, but have we transformed the patterns? That is the question I believe Liberation invites us to explore.
The Women’s Movement Was Also a Leadership Movement
There is another lesson here that deserves attention. The women gathering in that basement were practicing a form of leadership that many organizations still struggle to embrace. They were learning to speak honestly. They challenged assumptions. There was an agreement to disagree without automatically walking away.
While rare, they questioned authority. And yes, there was a desire to discover strength through connection rather than domination. They were also learning that solidarity does not mean everyone must have the same experience. Race, economic circumstances, family responsibilities, and access to opportunity shaped women’s lives differently then, just as they do now.
Real transformation requires listening to voices that challenge our comfortable assumptions.
That is as true in today’s workplace as it was in those consciousness-raising groups. Leadership is not about having all the answers. It is about creating the conditions where difficult truths can finally be spoken.
In my book GUTSY: How Women Leaders Make Change, there is one underlying question we still need to answer: What is the difference between child care and caring for children? More and more children seem lost in social media, unable to answer the big questions about life, while mothers (parents) are overwhelmed.
This is where my work with the GLIMMERS Effect™ becomes especially relevant. When we encounter a situation that challenges our beliefs, identity, or sense of belonging, we are often triggered. An old pattern takes over. We may attack, withdraw, please, rescue, blame, or become defensive. But transformation becomes possible when we recognize what is happening.
The GLIMMERS process offers five steps:
Trigger → Pattern → Pause → Ugly Middle → Choice
That pause is powerful. It creates the opportunity to ask: Am I responding to what is happening now, or am I reacting to something I learned long ago? Even bigger: “Am I choosing this behavior, or repeating it?” Another perspective: “Am I creating the future I want, or defending the past I know?”
Those are questions that can transform families, teams, and entire organizations. And they are questions the women of Liberation were beginning to ask more than fifty years ago.
What Will Our Daughters and Granddaughters Inherit?
Perhaps the most important question is not whether the women’s movement succeeded or failed. It is what we do with the freedom earlier generations helped create. We owe those women enormous gratitude. They challenged traditions, endured criticism, and opened doors that had remained closed for generations. But gratitude does not mean the work is finished.
Every generation has its own responsibility. We can honor the women who came before us without repeating every choice they made. We can acknowledge their courage while recognizing their limitations. And we can give the next generation something even more valuable than opportunity. We can give them greater freedom from the unconscious patterns that limit how they live, love, and lead.
That is what I call transforming triggers into GLIMMERS.
The Next Revolution Begins Within
As I thought about Liberation, I kept returning to one simple idea. The women of the 1970s fought to change the world around them. Today, we must continue that work while also examining the world within us. Because changing external systems without understanding internal patterns leaves too much unfinished.
We need both: the courage to challenge injustice and the self-awareness to recognize when we are unconsciously perpetuating it, and leaders who understand that power is not the same as transformation. We also need families and workplaces where people can tell the truth without being punished for speaking.
Bess Wohl’s play reminds us that meaningful change often begins with a conversation. I hope that we dare to continue it. I personally am one of those women from the 70s, and I am also looking at today. The women who came before us fought to open the doors. Our responsibility is to stop carrying the old cages through them.
And that, to me, is what liberation is really about. Here’s to transforming the past rather than repeating it. You can’t change what you can’t see. Pattern awareness makes the invisible visible.(opens in new tab)
To your success,
Sylvia Lafair
P.S. Let’s continue the conversation. What is one belief about being a woman, a parent, or a leader that you inherited from an earlier generation and have consciously chosen to change? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
