Informing Activists: “What are the challenges and opportunities that girls and young women should consider when getting involved in social movements?”

Nancy Whittier:

 

“What are the challenges and opportunities that girls and young women should consider when getting involved in social movements?”

 

Classic:
Taylor, Verta. 1999. “Gender and social movements: Gender processes in women’s self-help movements.” Gender & Society 13(1): 8-33.

Robnett, Belinda. 1996. “African-American women in the civil rights movement, 1954-1965: Gender, leadership, and micromobilization.” American Journal of Sociology. 101(6): 1661-1693.

Review:
McCammon, Holly J., Taylor, Verta, Reger, Jo, & Einwohner, Rachel L. (Eds.). (2017). The Oxford Handbook of US Women’s Social Movement Activism. Oxford University Press.

Contemporary:
Yang, Chia-Ling. 2017. “The political is the personal: women’s participation in Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement.” Social Movement Studies 16(6): 660-671.

Do We Have a New Women’s Movement?

The day following the Inauguration of Donald Trump, an estimated 500,000 activists descended upon Washington D.C. to protest in opposition to the values of his administration. Similar marches were held in cities worldwide. There was controversy leading up to the event.  Women of color challenged the organization committee for lacking diversity and called for more intersectionality. Some white women resented the challenge and chose to stay home or threatened to do so.  The Women’s March was fraught with a long-standing issue within American feminist movement, how to unify across differences. The concerns of the activists were broad including: immigration reform, Black Lives Matter, anti-Muslim discrimination, reproductive rights, and climate change. What do we make of this historic event? Does this moment mark the beginning of a new women’s movement? If so, what are the issues of the new movement? Who is included? Excluded? What do we make of all those who participated? Is this movement intersectional? If so, how are the activists putting an intersectional women’s agenda into practice?

Special thanks to Guest Editor Daisy Reyes, who curated this exciting dialogue.

Thanks also to our wonderful group of contributors.

Selina Gallo-Cruz, College of the Holy Cross (essay)
Rocío R. García, University of California, Los Angeles (essay)
Kelsy Kretschmer, Oregon State University (essay)

Editors in Chief,
Grace Yukich, David Ortiz, Rory McVeigh, Guillermo Trejo

Revitalizing Feminist Bureaucracies?

By Kelsy Kretschmer

In the run up to the first Women’s March, co-chair Bob Bland told Vogue that the group’s structure was “an organic, grassroots effort that prides itself on being inclusive, intersectional, and nonhierarchical,” with “a horizontal approach to leadership.” In another profile March organizers asserted that their “diffuse, decentralized structure will ensure [participants] aren’t answering to one leader” in the hope that the “movement will outlast any particular demonstration.” Implicit in these statements is the notion that other kinds of structures would ultimately ossify and fail. The first march broke records as the largest single day protest event in the nation’s history—a success by any measure.  Even as they planned and carried out this splashy, newsworthy, national event, organizers insisted it would stay a grassroots movement.

Do We Have a New Women’s Movement?

By Selina Gallo-Cruz

When over a thousand women convened in Worcester, Massachusetts on October 23, 1850, it was the first national convention for women’s rights and the most broadly organized gathering of women activists in history. Attendees were asked to “give an earnest thought and effective effort to… the general question of Woman’s Rights and Relations [including]: Her Education, Literary, Scientific, and Artistic; Her Avocations, Industrial, Commercial, and Professional; Her Interests, Pecuniary, Civil, and Political; in a word Her Rights as an Individual, and her Functions as a Citizen.” The convention resulted in the first coalition of formally organized committees for women’s rights and, some seventy years later, eventuated in US women’s vote and a worldwide women’s movement.

Single-Issue Politics in Intersectional Clothing: What’s New about U.S. Women’s Movement?

By Rocío R. García

The slew of adult onesies with Hillary Clinton’s face plastered throughout. The onslaught of protesters hurriedly walking into coffee shops in downtown Los Angeles before the march began, ignoring the numerous homeless people sitting on the sidewalks along the way. The sea of pink pussyhats moving in harmony with waves of red, white, and blue. The loud chants demanding reproductive autonomy, Trump’s impeachment, and true democratic governance. These are some of the most striking memories I have from the 2017 Women’s March in Los Angeles. Of course, there were beautiful contingents of communities of color fighting for systemic revolution, racial justice, prison abolition, trans liberation, environmental justice for Indigenous communities, reproductive justice, and immigrant rights, among many other issues. Yet, as I reflect on the guiding question of this dialogue—is there a new women’s movement—I am reminded of the saying that the more things change, the more things stay the same.

Informing Activists: How do I get people involved in my movement?

Katrina Kimport

Introduction 

 

How do I get people involved in my movement? 

 

Recommended Readings

Classic
Luker, Kristin. 1984. Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood. Vol. 3. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Joffe, Carole E., Tracy A. Weitz, and Chris L. Stacey. 2004. “Uneasy allies: pro‐choice physicians, feminist health activists and the struggle for abortion rights.” Sociology of health & illness 26.6: 775-796.

Review
Luna, Zakiya, and Kristin Luker. 2013. “Reproductive Justice” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 9:1:327-352

Contemporary:
Kimport, Katrina. 2016. “Divergent Successes: What the Abortion Rights Movement Can Learn from Marriage Equality’s Success.” Perspectives on sexual and reproductive health 48.4: 221-227.

Youth Participatory Politics Network- How can we make [political participation] easy and engaging?

Is There a New Women’s Movement?

The day following the Inauguration of Donald Trump, an estimated 500,000 activists descended upon Washington D.C. to protest in opposition to the values of his administration. Similar marches were held in cities worldwide. There was controversy leading up to the event.  Women of color challenged the organization committee for lacking diversity and called for more intersectionality. Some white women resented the challenge and chose to stay home or threatened to do so.  The Women’s March was fraught with a long-standing issue within American feminist movement, how to unify across differences. The concerns of the activists were broad including: immigration reform, Black Lives Matter, anti-Muslim discrimination, reproductive rights, and climate change. What do we make of this historic event? Does this moment mark the beginning of a new women’s movement? If so, what are the issues of the new movement? Who is included? Excluded? What do we make of all those who participated? Is this movement intersectional? If so, how are the activists putting an intersectional women’s agenda into practice?

Special thanks to Guest Editor Daisy Reyes, who curated this exciting dialogue.

Thanks also to our wonderful group of contributors.

Michael T. Heaney, University of Michigan (essay)
Nancy Whittier, Smith College (essay)
Jo Reger, Oakland University (essay)

Editors in Chief,
Grace Yukich, David Ortiz, Rory McVeigh, Guillermo Trejo

Is the Women’s Movement New Again?

By Jo Reger

The Women’s Marches of 2017 and the anniversary marches of 2018 once again bring us to the question: Is the U.S. women’s movement new again, having gone through a decline, death and finally rebirth? Does this new mobilization mean the movement is new? This is not a new question. Throughout the history of the movement, pundits have continually recast feminism as “new,” as in another wave of activism (this time maybe the fourth or fifth wave but who is counting?) or as a movement born fresh and new, independent of its former self.  Media observer Jennifer Pozner coined the term “False Feminist Death Syndrome,” in response to the constant reports of feminism’s death. In the same vein, feminist scholar Mary Hawkesworth noted feminism’s reoccurring obituary, observing it was meant to annihilate feminism’s challenge to the status quo. Hawkesworth and Pozner encourage us to question the question – in other words, under what circumstances is a long-lived movement seen as new?

Activism against Sexual Violence is Central to a New Women’s Movement: Resistance to Trump, Campus Sexual Assault, and #metoo

By Nancy Whittier

Sexual violence and harassment have been central issues in almost every era of women’s organizing and they are central to a contemporary women’s movement that both builds on and differs from earlier activism. Since 2010, a new generation of activists has targeted sexual violence in new ways. Slutwalks, a theatrical form of protest against the idea that women provoke rape by their dress, brought a new spin to long-standing “Take Back the Night” marches against violence against women. The wave of activism grew as college students began speaking out about assault on campus and gained a broad platform through social media. Students protested institutional failures to follow procedures for addressing sexual assault and used symbolic tactics to highlight the issue. For example, in 2014/15, Columbia student Emma Sulkowicz carried her dorm room mattress everywhere as a protest against Columbia’s inaction after she reported sexual assault. “Carry That Weight,” her project title, became the name for an emerging activist group. Another, “No Red Tape,” led to a cross-campus day of action in which activists attached pieces of red tape to clothes or campus statues.

The New Wave of the Women’s Movement in the United States

By Michael T. Heaney

The facts about the mobilization of women’s movement in the United States over the past 14 months are fairly well established.  A new organization calling itself the “Women’s March” formed shortly after the 2016 presidential election.  It coordinated massive rallies, consisting mostly of liberal women and their allies, in Washington, DC and around the world.  These rallies reached across diverse interests and were among the largest internationally coordinated demonstrations in history.  The Women’s March has retained its momentum over the past year, staging a national convention in Detroit in October 2017, and then reprising its post-inauguration performance this past weekend with rallies in hundreds of cities under the slogan “power to the polls”.  On the heels of the Women’s March, the #MeToo movement and the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund arose to address widespread sexual harassment and assault.  These efforts have spurred the national conversation on the inappropriate treatment of women in the workplace.  Millions of people have joined Pantsuit Nation and other internet discussion forums that discuss gender and politics.  Indeed, the women’s movement has been a palpable force in American politics and society since the 2016 election.