Punk did not suddenly "die" in the late 1970s or early 1980s but is a collective community producing material objects as far-ranging as literature, spoken word performance, underground print publications, bodily self-expression, and resistance to mainstream culture in the form of clothing, hairstyles, and body modification. Women active in Punk in the 1970s and 1980s were able to formulate a new image for women focused on a critique of mainstream culture's expectations of what it means to be female in the world. This work was largely disseminated through media: underground press, music, and film. Women active in Punk confronted and worked against the repression of assertiveness enacted by mainstream culture instead creating identities through physical modes of dress/style, speech, behavior, and material artistic objects that supported a more open formation of identity thereby influencing later generations of women and providing them with broader opportunities for identity expression.

The written history of Punk has traditionally been male-centric. This dissertation refutes the marginalization of women in Punk history, instead excavating the work of individuals and groups identifying as female who were central and essential to the formation of Punk. This work is essential in giving women the power to narrate our own history while also expanding the historical narrative of Punk. Rather than a decade dominated by male voices and male bodies, the 1980s were a reinvigoration of 1970s liberation, a reshaping of a broader feminism, and a foundation for the Riot Grrrl narrative of the 1990s. This is a history that works against the continued marginalization of women; a history focused on women's bodies taking up space and making noise.