Informal Civic Activity of Participants of the “Black Protests” and “Women’s Strike”: An Analysis of Scientific Journal Publications

Abstract

A recent attempt to impose restrictions on the right to carry out abortions due to developmental abnormalities of a foetus and risks to the mother’s health has triggered widespread protests in Poland. These have resulted in the formation of a new social movement, the so-called “Women’s Strike,” which the author of this paper sees as a significant manifestation of informal civic activity. This paper seeks to generate and systematise the meaning of scientific research dealing with these phenomena. The main problem is the following: What categories of a social movement analysis and the meaning imparted to the new social movement called “Women’s Strike” can be identified in scientific papers? The author has chosen to employ a non-reactive research approach, and the sample selection was deliberate. The process of selecting and narrowing down the documents focused on identifying fragments of papers that could offer insights and answers to the research questions. The analysis was performed with the use of a categorisation key developed by the author, which was used to identify the thematic distribution of the scientific papers devoted to the new movement. Results: Five categories were identified together with the assigned meanings: experience and citizenship, emotions expressed by the movement participants, feeling of community and sisterhood, development of the movement participants’ identity, the Women’s Strike future and development prospects. The conclusions contain examples of potential pedagogic studies, in particular, the educational aspects of the new movement’s impact on the young people participating in it, the experience of the identity transformation of the women participating in the strikes, reactivating the ideas and values of sisterhood and the feeling of community in the face of the threat to the freedom of reproduction, a change of the social attitude towards abortion caused by mass protests sparked by the toughening of the law, and media presentation of the new woman’s movement and its demands.