Fostering Empowerment, Building Community: The Challenge for State-Funded Feminist Organizations

Abstract

Using a case study methodology this paper explores specific ways in which the battered women's movement in Texas was affected by state funding. State funding of movement organizations is a mixed blessing. It allows movement activists to stabilize the funding of their organizations and to have a wider political and social impact. At the same time, state funding expands the organizational field based on available resources, not common ideology. This expansion has the potential to threaten the ideological and political cohesion of the movement. The affects of state funding are mitigated when the movement's leadership has a feminist vision and engages in feminist practices that challenge the bureaucratic and hierarchical practices of the state's decision making structures by empowering movement participants to work together collectively towards common goals.