Women In Social Movements Research Articles

The use of the swiss ball in labor: producing knowledge through the Instagram

In Brazilian society, in recent years, women's social movements and government initiatives have increased natural childbirth in public and private institutions. In this context, obstetric nursing care technologies are implemented to promote pain relief for women during labor, including the Swiss ball. However, in professional experience, it is clear that the population is unaware of its use, benefits and possibilities, considering that the Swiss ball is only presented when women are in labor. Thus, the objective was to exchange knowledge to clarify the use of the Swiss ball by women in labor. It is based that activities carried out on the internet presuppose: knowledge about the other; reciprocal and sporadic collaboration; solidarity sharing of activities and resources and trust association, through an agreement to share objectives. Therefore, the method chosen was a digital communication channel, Instagram, @universodaobstetricia, created on April 14, 2020, shared with 2,025 female internet users who voluntarily interacted with the creator in: forums, conversation circles, polls, quizzes and educational posts. Among the results obtained: 149 women know that the Swiss ball is recommended by Rede Cegonha, but 119 do not know this fact; 75 women learned about the use of the Swiss ball through social media, while 33 women only found out about its use on the day of birth. However, 119 women expressed that they were not aware that the Swiss ball is recommended as a “good practice” of care in obstetric care. It is concluded that the exchange of knowledge is an essential tool for the conscious choice of shared care during labor and that it is necessary for health professionals to develop creative, innovative and bold pedagogical initiatives to strengthen the interface between communication, science and society.

Women’s Rights Protection Social Movement in the Modern Armenian Society

Current research article is devoted to the exploration of women’s rights protection movement in modern Armenian society. The exploration of the current situation of the women’s rights protection movement in modern Armenian society includes two components. Firstly, through an analysis of documents (the Soviet state’s first codes of different years), the study examines the evolution of the women's rights protection social movement from the Soviet Union. This investigation illustrates how the Soviet Union’s political system had formed and shaped the women’s movement, which also affected the further development of the movement in modern Armenian society. Secondly, this research paper is based on an analysis of 34 in-depth interviews performed in Yerevan city from 2020-2023, with informants engaged in different types of women’s rights protection activism during the last 20 years in Armenian society. Information gathered from interviews allowed us to split the history of the development of the movement into two time-lapses in modern Armenian society. Triangulation of qualitative document analysis and in-depth interviews, equally contributed to the understanding of the main features of the women’s rights protection social movement as a whole social phenomenon in Armenian modern society. One of the key findings of the research is that despite the existence of diverse groups of women’s rights protection activists and just individuals coping with social system gender inequalities, there is difficulties in establishing social movement in modern Armenian society. The most prevailing definitions of social movements assume non-institutionalized collective actions with a clear set of goals. Instead, what currently exists in modern Armenian society is a form of street activism organized by efforts of different institutionalized organizations, where people engage in sporadic protests to raise awareness about gender issues and gender inequality. The paper also sheds light on social obstacles that prevent the initiative from becoming an institutionalized social movement for women’s rights protection in Armenia. The main social-cultural obstacles can be seen as a combination of factors including the absence of a general feminist agenda, lack of structural strain pushing for mobilization and social conservatism, etc.

Between Medicine and Revolution: towards the biography of Elena Nikolaevna Oshanina

Biographical research has been an integral part of historical science since its inception. However, as a rule, the most significant historical figures have always fallen into the sphere of interests of scientists. In post-Soviet historiography, biographies of people who are difficult to classify as outstanding figures began to appear more and more often. Despite this, through the analysis of their biographies, it is possible to trace how the inheritance of cultural traditions formed in different historical periods took place, the ways of assimilation of social, gender and other ideas, their transfers and influence on people's behavior in specific historical circumstances. The purpose of the article is to restore the biography of Elena Nikolaevna Oshanina (1874–1943), a physician by profession and a Socialist Revolutionary by party affiliation, based on unpublished archival documents from the central, local and personal archives, to identify her place in the revolutionary and women's social movement of the early twentieth century. A particular example of the biography makes it possible to understand how the process of formation of diverse and often layered identities of women of the late XIX – early XX centuries took place. As a result, it can be concluded that Elena Nikolaevna Oshanina's self-realization was in the field between two identities – professional and revolutionary, which were layered on top of each other, but both were very important for the heroine of this biography.

Contribution of N. M. Rimashevskaya to development of gender economic research

The article is devoted to the contribution of the great Russian scholar economist N. M. Rimashevskaya to development of gender economic studies in the USSR and in Russia. N. M. Rimashevskaya found a scientific school of gender studies in the USSR, then developed it in Russia, amid the changing economic and socio-political order. The authors consider the scientific and socio-political path of N. M. Rimashevskaya and the directions of her work in the field of gender economic studies in the Soviet, transitional periods and in the new Millennium. The article shows the role of N. M. Rimashevskaya in institutionalization of gender studies in the USSR and Russia, in particular, in creation of the Moscow Center for Gender Studies, academic journal "Population", in conducting the Taganrog project, which is unique in terms of duration and its socio-economic and gender analysis' depth. Ahead of the spread of the gender agenda among international organizations such as the UN, as early as in the 1960s and 1970s, N. M. Rimashevskaya conducted gender comparison of the daily time-use and its distribution to paid and unpaid work based on the data collected in Taganrog, predetermining one of the most relevant areas for development of gender economic analysis and gender budgeting, as well as economic analysis in general. The article also pays attention to the research and development of strategic concepts concerning the country's socio-economic policy and the programs carried out by the Moscow Center for Gender Studies. The impact of the scientific school of gender studies in Moscow on the formation and institutionalization of women's social and political movements in the newly formed democracy in the early 1990s also deserves a special attention. And finally, the key areas of economic research on gender inequality conducted under the leadership of N. M. Rimashevskaya are structured and described. Keywords: gender inequality, gender economic studies, N. M. Rimashevskaya, Moscow school of gender studies, gender economic theory.

Feminist Approaches to Gender Equity in Perú: The Roles of Conflict, Militancy, and Pluralism in Feminist Activism

For the past several decades, coordinated efforts from within the women’s social movement in Perú have led to groundbreaking legislation surrounding gender equity – for example, the National Gender Equality Policy of 2019 and the Gender Parity Law of 2020. These institutionalized policy changes mark milestones on the path to gender equity, certainly in Perú, but activist efforts that targeted these outcomes can inform women globally. The current study investigated key components of feminist activism by social movement actors themselves through the use of testimonio with nine key leaders in the movement. Using a liberation psychology approach and thematic narrative analysis, the findings suggested three key components of feminist activism: conflict, militant identity, and pluralism that were critical in processes of change. Centering majority world women’s voices contributes to the production of knowledge regarding approaches to gender equity, in particular because much that has been written about feminist action in psychology has been produced among samples of white women in the United States. Implications for understanding how the findings have the potential for global change are discussed.

The Transnational Women's Rights Movement and the World Economy

Promoting the ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) was a key objective of the transnational women's movement of the 1980s and 1990s. Yet, few studies examine what factors contribute to ratification. The small body of literature on this topic comes from a world-society perspective, which suggests that CEDAW represented a global shift toward women's rights and that ratification increased as international NGOs proliferated. However, this framing fails to consider whether diffusion varies in a stratified world-system. I combine world-society and world-systems approaches, adding to the literature by examining the impact of women's and human rights transnational social movement organizations on CEDAW ratification at varied world-system positions. The findings illustrate the complex strengths and limitations of a global movement, with such organizations having a negative effect on ratification among core nations, a positive effect in the semiperiphery, and no effect among periphery nations. This suggests that the impact of mobilization was neither a universal application of global scripts nor simply representative of the broad domination of core nations, but a complex and diverse result of civil society actors embedded in a politically stratified world.

Gendered symbols and habitus in collective action: Street protests in Taiwan, 1997–2006

ABSTRACTStudies on women in social movements have shown that women and men use different tactical preferences in protests. However, these are not limited to choice regarding preferential gendered symbols and artifacts; they can also be spontaneous corporeal and emotional expressions depending on contingencies of interaction during protests. To analyze the gender impact and differences in protest tactics, this study focuses on the symbols and artifacts used in protests and the gendered habitus that includes embodied behavior and emotions of protesters in varied situations. This paper examines street protests in Taiwan using audiovisual data collected from television news broadcasting between 1997 and 2006, to compare protest actions undertaken by men with those where women participants comprised the majority. This showed that gendered symbols and artifacts presented in street actions were less confrontational if they were planned beforehand. However, the embodied gender culture as habitus becomes more relevant during disruptive and high-conflict protest events. This study reveals that kneeling as a female posture was effective for avoiding conflict and gaining negotiation opportunities with authorities.

The Incorporation of Women in the Agricultural Trade Union Struggle: The Case of the Galician Peasants’ Union Sindicato Labrego Galego

AbstractThis project investigates the participation of rural Galician women in social movements regarding labor and rural concerns from 1970 to 1990, with a comparative and interdisciplinary approach. Based on the studies we have analyzed we can conclude that the recognition of rural women and their roles in their organizations have been consolidated in recent years. Rural women have gradually become significant social players in the development of their communities and, consequently, their economies. This study also demonstrates that participation in organizations plays a major role in the development of women's identities by changing the rural definition of gender. In the case of Galician women, historical relegation is evident as the empowerment of rural women did not begin until a group of feminist women became members of the Executive Board of Sindicato Labrego Galego. The driving force behind this empowerment was the creation of organizations for women with clear and specific objectives.

Gender Differences in Political Participation: Comparing Street Demonstrators in Sweden and the United Kingdom

Research on gender and politics has primarily focused on women’s participation in women’s movements and institutional politics separately. Our article is innovative in multiple respects: first, employing a comparative perspective we analyse what impact gender regimes have on participation in street protests. Second, we study the relationship between participation in electoral and protest politics and how this relationship is gendered. Third, we compare the participation of men and women in social movements. We are able to do this by drawing on nuanced survey data of five street demonstrations in the UK and Sweden. Our comparative research demonstrates that involvement in protest and institutional politics varies by gender, country and context. Our findings have important implications for gender equality in terms of social inclusion and political representation and contribute to political sociology, sociology of gender and social movement research.

“The Greatest of Its Kind Ever Witnessed in America”

More than one million women participated in women's marches in early 2017 to protest the inauguration of President Donald Trump and to promote women's rights and civil rights. One hundred years earlier, women across the country also mobilized to protest gender inequality in the United States and an unsympathetic incoming president. This research examines press coverage previewing the 1913 women's parade on Washington to foster a better understanding of how the press covers women's activism and social movements in general. Using social movement theory to examine the framing strategies used by the press, this study found an emphasis on motivational and counterframing focused on episodic rather than thematic coverage. This research also builds on literature of women in political roles facing pushback from other women, thereby undermining the advancement of women for all of them.

Black Women and Politics in New York City by Julie A. Gallagher

Reviewed by: Black Women and Politics in New York City by Julie A. Gallagher Rachel Corbman (bio) Gallagher, Julie A. Black Women and Politics in New York City. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2012. For the past three decades, there has been a steady increase in feminist scholarship focused on the history of black women in the United States as part of a larger cross-disciplinary body of black feminist thought. This includes a diverse range of work on free and enslaved women in antebellum America; historical studies of professional black women and black women in the arts; and analyses of the black women’s club movement as well as the involvement of black women in social movements of the twentieth century. With the exception of biographical studies of notable women, however, there has been limited attention to the involvement of black women in the major bastion of centralized power in the United States: electoral politics. Julie A. Gallagher’s Black Women and Politics in New York City is a rare exception to this general rule. Focusing on local and national races from 1910 until the 1970s, Gallagher meticulously traces the history of black women’s political activism in New York through the biographies of more than fifteen black women who forged their careers in Harlem or Bedford-Stuyvesant. The rejoining and in Gallagher’s title is quite crucial. As much as her book is a study of black women politicians, it is also a political history of New York City and the United States more broadly. By specifically studying the history of black women in New York, Gallagher proves that black women have always been a part of America’s [End Page 416] political landscape, even though these women are rarely included in historical accounts—not even histories centered on women. This omission should be familiar to black feminist historians as it was (and still remains) a catalyzing impetus behind the field. However, this does not fully explain why Black Women and Politics in New York City is the first history of its kind and among a limited number of histories of black women and politics across the country. Though black feminists have incisively delineated the government’s role in the marginalization of black women, a greater emphasis has been placed on sites of resistance outside of electoral politics. This has largely occluded analyses that thematize the ways in which black women have historically worked through the system. For these reasons, Black Women and Politics in New York City stands as an important and thought provoking contribution to the field. Gallagher heavily relies on archival research, mining a wealth of material on individual politicians and the institutions and organizations that these women participated in. From newspaper accounts to autobiographies, the highly educated and comparatively privileged women who populate Gallagher’s study have left a voluminous record of their lives and careers. For black feminist historians, this relative abundance of source material is unusual. Indeed, creativity and conjecture are often necessary ingredients alongside traditional sources for historians of minoritized groups. In contrast, the only leap of interpretation that Gallagher makes in Black Women and Politics in New York City is when she questions voter motivation, asking for example “how much did gender matter when both candidates were African American?” (82). Instead, Gallagher primarily reads along the grain of the historical record, providing a thorough overview of relevant elections from Grace Campbell’s pioneering campaign for an assembly seat in 1917 to Shirley Chisholm’s pathbreaking presidential run in 1972. Gallagher makes a number of key decisions in her writing of this history. First, although she describes her project as “a collective biography,” the text elides personal biographical details outside of the births, educations, and sometimes marriages of the women in the study (4). On one level, this is the inevitable result of her attempt to fit more than a dozen political careers into two hundred pages. Implicitly, though, it also responds to the emphasis on the domestic lives of female politicians in the public discourse. In 1944, the black newspaper People’s Voice, for example, assured its readers that “despite her varied activities, Mrs. [Ada B.] Jackson still runs a...

Women defining terrorism: ethnonationalist, state, and machista terrorism

This article explores definitions of terrorism according to various women in the Basque regions of Spain and France. We ask how women in social movements and government institutions define terrorism, how terrorism influences them, and whether they are viewed as victims of violence and/or as political agents who challenge terrorism. We discuss three definitions of terrorism: ethnonationalist terrorism of ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna), state terrorism against ETA operatives and supporters, and terrorismo machista (or intimate terrorism seen as gender violence). The article uncovers multiple women’s lived experiences related to terrorism, and by problematising agency and definitions of terrorism, it challenges the binary in international relations of women as either victims or violent perpetrators of terrorism and it establishes terrorismo machista as political violence closely related to other forms of political violence. We conclude that women are important political agents regarding multiple types of terrorism.

Disciplining the “Second World”: the relationship between transnational and local forces in contemporary Hungarian women's social movements

During the past 20 years, Hungarian women's movements have been increasingly reaching out to their transnational counterparts for inspiration and support. The activists' growing exposure at the transnational level has profoundly affected the thematic foci that they select for mobilisation. Generational and information-technology changes have both added to the increasing focus of Hungarian women's organisations on domestic violence. Such a shift has channelled attention away from welfare-related issues for the sake of resonance and transnational support. This article investigates these trends and changes, suggests reasons for their emergence, and addresses their implications.

A band of noble women: racial politics in the women's peace movement

A Band of Noble Women brings together the histories of the women's peace movement and the black women's club and social reform movement in a story of community and consciousness building between the world wars. Believing that achievement of improved race relations was a central step in establishing world peace, African American and white women initiated new political alliances that challenged the practices of Jim Crow segregation and promoted the leadership of women in transnational politics. Under the auspices of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), they united the artistic agenda of the Harlem Renaissance, suffrage-era organizing tactics, and contemporary debates on race in their efforts to expand women's influence on the politics of war and peace. Plastas shows how WILPF espoused middle-class values and employed gendered forms of organization building, educating thousands of people on issues ranging from U.S. policies in Haiti and Liberia to the need for global disarmament. Highlighting WILPF chapters in Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Baltimore, the author examines the successes of this interracial movement as well as its failures. A Band of Noble Women enables us to examine more fully the history of race in U.S. women's movements and illuminates the role of the women's peace movement in setting the foundation for the civil rights movement.

Movimento de mulheres negras: trajetória política, práticas mobilizatórias e articulações com o Estado brasileiro

O presente artigo analisa a trajetória e consolidação do Movimento de Mulheres Negras (MMN) na cena pública brasileira ao longo dos últimos trinta anos. Através de entrevistas com militantes pioneiras e participantes desse movimento social bem como de levantamento de fontes documentais, o estudo teve o intuito de compreender quais processos subjazem a constituição desse novo sujeito coletivo, seus dilemas e redes de solidariedade com outros movimentos sociais, o lugar das hierarquias de gênero e raça em suas reivindicações, além do seu processo de institucionalização/burocratização e sua articulação com o Estado brasileiro.

Dinâmica e consubstancialidade das relações sociais

Conflitos de classe, de gênero e raciais tendem a ser concebidos, interpretados e enfrentados isoladamente. A autora analisa desenvolvimentos no campo dos estudos feministas e da sociologia do trabalho que apontam para a interdependência dessas categorias sociais, tanto no plano teórico como na prática de movimentos sociais de mulheres e trabalhadoras.

Democracy and the rise of women's movements in sub-Saharan Africa

Despite a late and fitful start, democracy in Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe has recently shown promising growth. Kathleen M. Fallon discusses the role of women and women's advocacy groups in furthering the democratic transformation of formerly autocratic states. Using Ghana as a case study, Fallon examines the specific processes women are using to bring about political change. She assesses information gathered from interviews and surveys conducted in Ghana and assays the existing literature to provide a focused look at how women have become involved in the democratization of sub-Saharan nations. The narrative traces the history of democratic institutions in the region-from the imposition of male-dominated mechanisms by western states to latter-day reforms that reflect the active resurgence of women's political power within many African cultures-to show how women have made significant recent political gains in Ghana and other emerging democracies. Fallon attributes these advances to a combination of forces, including the decline of the authoritarian state and its attendant state-run women's organizations, newly formed constitutions, and newfound access to good-governance funding. She draws the study into the larger debate over gendered networks and democratic reform by exploring how gender roles affect and are affected by the state in Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. In demonstrating how women's activism is evolving with and shaping democratization across the region, Democracy and the Rise of Women's Movements in Sub-Saharan Africa reveals how women's social movements are challenging the barriers created by colonization and dictatorships in Africa and beyond.

An ideology of sisterhood?: American women's movements between nationalism and transnationalism

This article aims to understand the deep roots of the contemporary breakdown of the paradigm of the so-called ‘global sisterhood’, of which the American women movements constitute an interesting case-study. In particular, this article explores the ways in which American female thought and activism have interwoven discourses of nation with the concepts of sisterhood and motherhood, in their universal sense, within a context that is both national and transnational. Even if the interactions in terms of race, class and ethnicity are taken into account, the article emphasizes the need to privilege the analysis of the experience of the white middle-class women involved in the women's rights and social reform movements from the American Revolution to the end of the 1960s, considering the 1970s as a turning point from both political and theoretical perspectives.

Feminist media coverage of women in war: ‘You are our eyes and ears to the world’

Mainstream media coverage of war often distorts or ignores women's perspectives and experiences in armed conflict, and also their efforts to build peace. This article focuses on the work of FIRE (Feminist International Radio Endeavour/Radio Internacional Feminista), a women's international Internet radio initiative produced by Latin American and Caribbean women in Costa Rica, which ‘uses technologies, voices, and actions’ to amplify the voices of women worldwide as they recount their experiences and perspectives of armed conflict. In doing so, FIRE helps promote an alternative vision of human existence that is based on social justice and human rights, and which serves to strengthen women's and other social and political movements that are based on these values1.

Refashioning IPE: What and how gender analysis teaches international (global) political economy

ABSTRACT It remains the case that, in spite of the consistently high quality and quantity of gender analysis, gender has not been able to achieve more than a marginal status in International Political Economy (IPE). Increasingly visible as a category of analysis, gender remains trivialized in the minds of both the mainstream and more critical IPE approaches, as a category pertaining only to the lives of women, women's labour rights and women's social movements. This essay therefore analyses what mainstream and critical IPE approaches do and do not say about the constitution of the global political economy. My central argument is that a gender(ed) IPE analysis is absolutely central to fully understanding and explaining the processes and practices of the global political economy, but that the dominant studies and practices of IPE tend not to take into account the contributions of gender based analyses. A critique of the detailed content of gender approaches in IPE is, however, not the main purpose of this review; rather, gender and feminist analyses are the lenses with which to view IPE, with its exclusions, silences and marginalisations, as well as its openings and future paths, not the other way around.