Feminist Organizing: What’s Old, What’s New? History, Trends, and Issues

Abstract

Feminist organizing is a moving target. Not only are feminists individually on the move, in and out of institutions, offices, and political engagements, but also their collective mobilizations change in character over time. By feminist organizing we mean efforts led by women explicitly challenging women's subordination to men. This differs from two broader terms: women's movements (movements composed of women seeking social change but not necessarily addressing women's subordination); and feminism (concern with women's empowerment, not necessarily collectively organized) (Ferree and Mueller 2004, 577; McBride and Mazur 2010). 1 We do not locate feminist organizing only within women's movements but rather seek to understand shifts in where organizing occurs, the factors behind these shifts, and their consequences for feminist objectives. We begin by sketching the contours of feminist organizing from the nineteenth century to the present. Borrowing an image from historian Leila Rupp, we see global feminist organizing less like waves and more akin to "choppy seas," with feminist organizing cresting and falling in different parts of the

Ethics, politics and feminist organizing: Writing feminist infrapolitics and affective solidarity into everyday sexism

“…Whilst the use and efficacy of social media for online activism and resistance is worthy of critical discussion, it is one we can only briefly explore in the scope of this article. 5 "Lifting as we climb" was the phrase popularized by the black women's club movement in the United States (Ewig and Feree, 2013). 6 Bates describes being trolled on the internet which she says exemplifies just how needed the project is, stating: 'And this is what I got, not twice a day but up to 200 times a day just for speaking out…the fact that it was so scary for some people, for somebody just to want to talk about equality, just to want to raise women's voices and give their stories a platform that they had to tell me exactly how they wanted to disembowel me and with exactly which weapons and in what order and not just that I should be raped but exactly how I should be raped and in which orifices and where and when' (Bates, 2014b: from 9 mins).…”

Even when those struggles are not our own: Storytelling and solidarity in a feminist social justice organization

“…I describe these organizations collectively here as feminist social justice organizations. In different periods of history and in various geographical locations, such organizations have taken many forms (Ewig & Ferree, ), including social movement organizations (Vachhani & Pullen, ), conscious‐raising groups (hooks, ), NGOs (non‐governmental organizations) (Bernal & Grewal, ), collectives (Bordt, ), coalitions (Arnold, ) and voluntary associations (Else, ), to name a few. At the core, feminist social justice organizations are characterized by a collective commitment to achieving change.…”

Women’s Movements and Feminism

“…As pointed out by Karen Beckwith, this rising body of work has informed many research questions in a variety of research fields, from "comparative politics, social movement analysis, democratization scholarship, gender and politics research, and feminist theory" (Beckwith, 2013, p. 1). Complementing a series of overviews of the international field of research on women's movements (Beckwith, 2000(Beckwith, , 2013Bereni and Revillard, 2012;Ewig and Ferree, 2013;Ferree and Mueller, 2004; McBride Laure Bereni, "Women's Movements and Feminism: French Political Sociology Meets a Comparative Feminist Approach" (Chapter 21), in Robert Elgie, Emiliano Grossman, and Amy G. Mazur (eds), The Oxford Handbook of French Politics, Oxford University Press, 2016, p. 461-482. and Mazur, 2008), the focus will be placed here on what this research field brings to the study of social movements.…”

“…1 For an overview of this research field, see (Banaszak, 2008;Beckwith, 2000Beckwith, , 2013Ewig and Ferree, 2013;Ferree and Mueller, 2004;McBride and Mazur, 2008).…”