Gender and Social Movements. Jo Reger

Acknowledgments

      Writing a book like this one is a chance to review and remember so much of what I have read over the course of my career. Often certain scholars whom I cite or know personally come to feel like old friends and this book was a chance to renew my acquaintance. Some of them are scholars I have known and cited for years such as Verta Taylor, Leila Rupp, Nancy Whittier, Kathy Blee, Rachel Einwohner, Michael Messner, David Meyer, Suzanne Staggenborg, Judy Taylor, and Patricia Yancey Martin. Others are new acquaintances such as Tristan Bridges, Kelsy Kretschmeyer, Heather McKee Hurwitz, Miriam Abelson, Kristen Barber, and Fátima Suárez. I am so grateful for knowing you and your work. Your work is a key part of the scaffolding of this book.

Essential in writing this volume is the work I did as editor of the journal Gender & Society. This experience honed my understanding of gender and intersectionality and gave me the foundation and the confidence to start examining how gender and social movements intertwine. It also allowed me to cast a critical eye on social movement research and explore how gender often is left out of our analyses. I wrote this book because this is the book I wanted to have earlier in the course of my academic career. As a gender and social movement scholar I have often tried to cobble together an understanding of how each influences the other. This book was my opportunity to puzzle this out in my own way. I hope students find this useful in thinking about how the world changes through social movements as well as how the world is structured through gender. As I finish this book, I continue to be amazed by the complexity of gender in our social world – from how it shapes us to how we rebel and seek to change gender. I find that the lens of social movements allows for that complexity to emerge.

      I am also grateful to the team at Polity. I had multiple conversations with editor Jonathan Skerrett starting at the 2017 ASA meetings. I was initially unwilling to start on this project, having just completed four years with Gender & Society. He was very patient and, through our continued conversations, I grew excited about the project and the opportunity to bring gender and social movement research into conversation with each other. Assistant Editor Karina Jákupsdóttir was also very patient as she repeatedly checked in and kept this project on track. I am grateful for the three reviewers and their comments on an earlier version of the manuscript. Their insights helped to strengthen my arguments, deepen my discussions, and clarify the points I want to make. I am grateful for their time and attention. Despite these revisions, I am not sure I was able to satisfy Reviewer 2 completely, but I did my best and their comments made for a better book.

      In regard to the actual process of writing, I am forever grateful for my writing group extraordinaire – Jennifer Law-Sullivan and George Sanders. Our weekly meetings keep me on track and, as I review the chapters in the final proofing, I can recall where I wrote them, often in the library, and often in your presence. I also thank you two for being a support group through a really difficult year of Covid and online teaching. Sometimes, I needed those venting (and laughing) sessions more than I needed to write. A very special appreciation goes out to George, who read this entire book, offered excellent revisions and settled some of my anxiety.

      Finally, to my cast of characters at home – Angel and Faith. I love you both dearly. Thank you for making a home. And to my fur babies – Silvia, Cricket, and the irreplaceable Ray-Ray – you all wandered down to the basement every once in a while to check on what I was doing and sometimes sit on my lap. I appreciated your love and the writing breaks I took to go upstairs one more time to see why Cricket is barking at the neighbors and to see if Silvia is really out of food and starving, as she seems to be claiming.

Introduction: Integrating Gender and Social Movements

      A 2017 MeToo rally in Los Angeles, CA.

      Credit: Ronen Tivony/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Imagine you check your social media one morning and the hashtag #MeToo is everywhere. People you know, most of them women, are sharing stories of sexual harassment, abuse, and assault. Along with the personal posts, you see multiple news stories of prominent men in politics, business, entertainment, and the media being accused of sexual harassment and impropriety (of all degrees). The narrative in each case is similar. A man (rarely a woman) in a position of power, repeatedly used that power over a subordinate regardless of her objections. Most of these men had been engaging in these behaviors for years, some of them decades. As you watch the news coverage, it seems that as quickly as the accusations come to light, the accused is punished, losing their job and access to resources, privilege, and status. The mainstream media is full of reports, and pundits are perplexed as to the source of this tsunami of accusations. You begin to think over your own life and have a few “aha” moments of your own – A boss who stood too close; A teacher who made inappropriate comments;

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