Women, Gender, and Nonviolence in Political Movements

Abstract

Although “the ties between women's rights movements and nonviolence have been deep and enduring,” women's movements are not the only movements to rely upon nonviolent collective action. The Indian nationalist movement with Gandhi innovated with passive resistance; the U.S. black civil rights movement employed nonviolent civil disobedience as its major collective action; and peace and environmental movements in the 1980s and 1990s have employed nonviolent tactics. The ties between women's movements and nonviolence, however, are notable insofar as nonviolent tactics predominate in the collective action repertoires of women's movements (Rucht forthcoming). Because nonviolent tactics prevail, they are more visibly connected to those movements.