Feminist waves, global activism, and gender violence regimes: Genealogy and impact of a global wave

Abstract

Global waves of activism are powerful social forces shaping - and shaped by- policy and politics worldwide. Such waves are constituted not by a single movement or campaign but rather comprise national, local and transnational organizations and networks of activists. We lack the conceptual underpinnings necessary to fully capture the impact of such a diffuse and complex phenomenon. This prevents scholars from fully grasping the ways that waves shape and are shaped by national and transnational campaigns and their interactions, the ways that core ideas become embedded in national and international institutions, and the ways that core ideas develop and change. In this paper, we propose understanding global feminism as a global wave as a way to develop some insight into these processes.We elaborate this concept and give a brief overview of the development of the global feminist wave, showing the ways that transnational networks serve as mechanisms for linking activists to global governance and also to activists in other countries, strengthening global civil society. These organizational forms contribute to the development of global feminism, a set of ideas that motivate action and become embedded in an evolving set of international norms. Though global feminism is sometimes associated with a particular set of ideas from second wave feminism of the 1960s and 70s, we argue that it has its roots in the abolitionist and suffrage movements of the late 1800s.The roots of global feminism in the struggles of racialized and colonized women illuminates its potential as a source for gender justice today.We sketch the way that the global feminist wave interacts with different kinds of regimes, showing how domestic regimes and global norms evolve together focussing on the issue of gender-based violence against women. We suggest that different regime types channel waves differently, with neoliberal regimes paradoxically producing more openness to global waves while social democratic regimes- particularly those with weak civil society- channel waves through established institutional channels. A stronger connection to global civil could advance gender justice for intersectionally-marginalized women. We illustrate this argument with a brief application to Canada.