Women who challenge or defend the status quo: Ingroup identities as predictors of progressive and reactionary collective action

Abstract

Collective action (CA) research looking at gender has focused predominantly on feminist activism, overlooking activism of women who reinforce gender inequalities and traditional gender roles (such as women supporting men's rights or anti-abortion protesters). Our research addresses this oversight, demonstrating the key role of identity content in predicting CA in support of progressive and reactionary social change among women. Using two large online samples of women from the US (Study 1: N = 1825) and the UK (Study 2: N = 992), we show that identification with 'women' is either weakly associated or unrelated to progressive and reactionary CA and is thus too broad to differentiate between support for CA with opposing goals. In contrast, subgroup identities matter: feminist identification is associated with support for progressive CA, while identification with traditional women is associated with support for reactionary CA. We discuss the implications of our findings for research on CA and gender inequalities.

Cognitive–motivational mechanisms of political polarization in social-communicative contexts

“…In this way, ego- and group-justifying motives exacerbate issue polarization when viewers are aware of partisan or ideological disagreement. Such circumstances also make individual and group differences in system justification motivation more predictive of political behavior and more salient to political actors by drawing attention to the fact that some people are driven to defend the status quo while others are driven to challenge it 101 , 107 , 171 , 172 , 250 – 252 .…”

From cooperation to conflict: The role of collective narratives in shaping group behaviour

“…Compelling collective narratives about important societal issues such as relationships between social groups, power imbalances, and inequality are often more relevant as platforms for psychological group formation and engagement in collective action than biological and cultural bases of differentiation (McGarty et al, 2009), as the quote below illustrates: (...) I am a feminist first, not a woman, and a socialist first, not a Scot....unite with people who share your ideas not your accent [or] your genitals (Harpies & Quines, quoted by Hopkins et al, 2006) Often, even when identifying with social categories, it is the narratives we support within these categories which are the most meaningful to our self-definition, and this seems to apply particularly well to identities associated with collective action-for example, if we consider narratives associated to the social category 'woman', we realise that they are too general to be conducive to collective action (they may be connected to individual behaviour, but not specific forms of collective action). In the generic social category 'woman', either feminist or non-feminist norms can be included, together with constructions of what being a woman means (Mikołajczak et al, 2022;Uysal et al, 2022).…”

“…Often, even when identifying with social categories, it is the narratives we support within these categories which are the most meaningful to our self‐definition, and this seems to apply particularly well to identities associated with collective action—for example, if we consider narratives associated to the social category ‘woman’, we realise that they are too general to be conducive to collective action (they may be connected to individual behaviour, but not specific forms of collective action). In the generic social category ‘woman’, either feminist or non‐feminist norms can be included, together with constructions of what being a woman means (Mikołajczak et al., 2022; Uysal et al., 2022). The differences in how the narrative about (gender‐based) intergroup relations and womanhood is interpreted can effectively divide women into ideologically opposed camps sharing different sets of values, beliefs, norms and collective behaviours (Bliuc et al., 2021; Mikołajczak et al., 2022).…”

“…In the generic social category ‘woman’, either feminist or non‐feminist norms can be included, together with constructions of what being a woman means (Mikołajczak et al., 2022; Uysal et al., 2022). The differences in how the narrative about (gender‐based) intergroup relations and womanhood is interpreted can effectively divide women into ideologically opposed camps sharing different sets of values, beliefs, norms and collective behaviours (Bliuc et al., 2021; Mikołajczak et al., 2022). In other words, groups are characterised by different identity content , a concept referring to the definitions and meaning of a group identity incorporating beliefs, values, and norms which are inextricably linked to relationships between groups in a given social context (Livingstone & Haslam, 2008).…”

Supporting men or male privilege? Women's progressive and reactionary collective action for men

“…We used Prolific to recruit 2,118 heterosexual women living in the US. (Note that part of this study was reported in Mikołajczak et al, 2022). Only heterosexual women were invited given that the focus of a broader study was on exploring heterosexual interdependencies between women and men.…”