New Dimensions of Global Feminist Influence: Tracking Feminist Mobilization Worldwide, 1975–2015

Abstract

Feminist mobilization, crucial for advancing women's human rights, has increased in all world regions since 1975. However, we do not know enough about the global impact of this mobilization because we lack adequate databases to explore the ways that feminist mobilization interacts with other factors that enhance and limit women's rights, such as democracy, intergovernmental processes, and transnational, regional organizing. Our ability to explore these questions is obstructed by a lack of data on the global south and measures that focus on formal organizations. This project remedies these gaps, developing an improved measure of feminist mobilization that encompasses autonomous, domestic feminist mobilization in 126 countries, 1975–2015, enabling us to track global and regional trends. Using regional comparisons and statistical analysis, we use this new measure to reveal new patterns and complexities in feminist mobilization. We discern distinct regional patterns in such organizing that defy facile predictions of global convergence and suggest a central role for UN processes advancing women's rights. Our analysis also points to the importance of transnational feminist networks and democratization as factors enabling and strengthening feminist mobilization. We conclude by suggesting some fruitful avenues for exploring relationships between feminist movements, international institutions, and democracy.

Dimensions of Transnational Feminism: Autonomous Organizing, Multilateralism and Agenda-Setting in Global Civil Society

“…Domestic Feminist Mobilization. To measure domestic feminist mobilization, we employ a newly available measure of feminist mobilization, the Feminist Mobilization Index, a measure based on a database of 126 countries from 1975 to 2015 (Forester et al 2022). This database encompasses a wide range of types of feminist mobilization over an unprecedented temporal and geographic scope.…”

“…Feminism has often been defined conceptually as an idea or set of discourses (Mansbridge 1995;McBride and Mazur 2010). Movements are diffuse phenomena, that involve both individuals and organizations connected through both formal and informal ties around a shared idea and sense of purpose, and they involve political action of some kind (Forester et al 2022;Mansbridge 1995;Mazur et al 2016).…”

“…Transnational feminist movements are identifiable by their commitment to addressing gender injustice, whether this is conceptualized by movements as male bias, sexual inequality, patriarchy, or gender hierarchy more generally (Forester et al 2022;Moghadam 2000). A transnational feminist movement allows actors to organize under unifying issues rather than under the banner of their national origin or identity, opening new bases for organization and new pathways to political action (Moghadam 2000;Tripp 2006).…”

“…Autonomous organizations are neither subordinate to nor controlled by larger institutions that have overriding goals that prevent making gender equality or justice a fundamental priority. In domestic politics, this means autonomous feminist movements are independent of the state, political parties, and other associations that do not center the subordination of women or some subsection of women (Forester et al 2022;Molyneux 1998;Ray and Korteweg 1999;Weldon 2002;2011).…”

“…UN Women, the women's policy apparatus of the United Nations (UN), is a paradigmatic site of multilateral feminism. The UN has been an important locus for feminist mobilization, even an "Unlikely Godmother" of the international women's movement, as feminist conferences and agencies of the UN have driven feminist mobilization (Snyder 2006; see also Forester et al 2022;Friedman 1999;Sandler and Goetz 2020). The feminist agencies of the UN helped to drive the idea of women's human rights, from violence against women to developing a new international economic order (Friedman 1995;Snyder 2006;Weldon 2006b).…”