the study of social movements away from a strictly structural and resource-focused analysis. This was brought in part by feminist activists studying the movement around them, a dynamic seen in other movements such as the student, anti-war, peace, and anti-nuclear movements. In studying the movements around them, feminist researchers could also see how a movement could shape society, and how, as gender issues shifted in movements, so did the focus and goals of movements. In sum, the study of a gendered social movement such as U.S. feminism has influenced the social movement theories and concepts that can be applied to all social movements.
Addressing inequality
In addition to integrating the study of gender and social movements, studying gender within social movements allows for an investigation of a system of inequality. Even when the movement is not specifically organized around gender, gender stratification is present in movements, shaping who has power and resources. Raewyn Connell refers to this structural inequality as “gender regimes” (1987: 120) built into an institution or organization. These regimes establish who has power and who does not. Verta Taylor calls the ideology underlying these regimes “gender logic” even when they do not draw specifically “on the language of femininity and masculinity or of gender contention” (1999: 21). Taylor offers the example of “beloved community” during the civil rights movements as an illustration of how a movement not focused specifically on gender used a language of care and concern in its understanding of the social movement community. These gender regimes and gendered logics reflect the larger society and by examining them we can learn about the society in which movements form and some of the ways in which gender inequality manifests itself.
Studying social change
Studying the relationship between gender and social movements is also an investigation of how social change occurs. When social movements focus on gendered issues, such as the men’s rights movement discussed in Chapter 1, gender norms and societal understandings of gender can shift. However, shifts in society, such as in the economy and labor market as well as social disruptions of war or global pandemics, can alter gender norms and spur social movement activism. For example, many African women’s movements started out as peace and anti-war movements and became gender-focused movements (Tripp 2017). Here we can see how the end of the wars often brought social reorganization and a call by activists for reforming society. In the course of pressing for reforms, women peace activists also experienced political openings that “helped foster new women’s activism, which sped up processes of women’s rights reform” (Tripp 2017: 46). There is a consistent pattern across time and place in which movements focused on non-gendered issues give birth to gender-focused movements.
Focusing on gender inequality and dynamics of social change leads us back to the example of the #MeToo movement. Gender norms and expectations, particularly around expressions of sexuality and expectations, can result in the identification of a problem, such as sexual harassment and assault, that spreads through society. Understanding these problems as more than individual issues but as inequality embedded in societal norms can lead to the formation of a social movement. This problem, or as social movement scholars call it a “grievance,” is articulated by social movement participants, diffuses into society and is embedded in activist networks. Sparked by an event, such as the highly publicized case of Harvey Weinstein, experiences are reexamined, stories are told, activists are organized, and a societal shift begins. In sum, in the #MeToo movement, a societal issue moves from being an accepted norm to a social problem and then a grievance articulated through a social movement. Through sustained attention by activists, combined with shifting social attitudes, we see that though the emergence of #MeToo can appear spontaneous and somewhat puzzling, it is instead an outcome of a movement that drew on and redefined what it means to experience sexual assault and harassment through an analysis of gender. In all, combining gender and social movements provides us with a lens to understand the world around us.
Organization of the Book
To investigate these dynamics, this volume moves from examining how the sex and gender of participants shapes a movement, to gender as an ideology or social logic shaping movements and ends by exploring reactions and responses coming from gendered movements. In doing so, Chapters 1 through 4 focus on how the gender and sex binaries – male/female, woman/man, feminine/masculine – influence movements and activists. Since these binaries are a primary “sorting” mechanism in society with the potential to position people in certain ways, movements often reflect these binaries. However, examining how movements align themselves to these binaries does not mean that only the identities of women and men and males and females have been involved in movements. On the contrary, reviewing social movements can illustrate how non-binary, gender fluid, transgender, and intersex people are present and influential in movements. In Chapter 5, I take up some of these histories to illustrate the diversity of gender and sex identities in movements and how as understandings of gender change, so do the focus and goals of movements. My goal in this text is not to center the focus on cisgender activists but to take a broader view of how gender as a social logic organizing our lives is incorporated into social movements.
Throughout the book, I also bring a focus to what an intersectional perspective can bring to our understanding of social dynamics. I do so to note how identities beyond gender such as race-ethnicity, age, social class, religion, nationality, and other social identities also act as “sorting mechanisms” in society and intertwine with gender. I bring in this intersectional perspective to remind the reader of these forces and have included sources such as websites and books that will allow further investigation. At the start of each chapter, I introduce a vignette from a social movement and use that vignette to illustrate the concepts and dynamics of each chapter.
Chapter 1 – People in Movements: When Movements Focus on Single-Gender Concerns – considers how movements are shaped by participants’ gendered concerns. Here I examine how (mostly) single-gender movements work to change or resist change of societal gender norms. This chapter focuses on women’s and men’s movements and how they arise, what they focus on, and how they shift over time. I show how single-gender concerns can take a multitude of approaches with movement activists sometimes working in opposition to each other.
Chapter 2 – Gender in Movements: What Happens in Multi-Gender Movements – examines how gender shapes social movements that are not specifically organized to change gender norms and addresses how gender organizes movements containing multiple gender identities. Drawing on the ways in which societal gender norms sort people often into the binary, I examine how men and women can fare very differently from each other in the same movement. Here I show how participants in social movements bring their gendered understandings of the world into movements and act on gendered assumptions, expectations, and beliefs. I examine how gender shapes who is thought to be an activist and their abilities in movements.
In Chapter 3 – Coming to the Movement: How Gender Influences Pathways to Activism – I continue to draw on the dominant gender binary as a sorting mechanism to explore the different routes and processes by which people join and become active in social movements. How people come to movements is a core question for social movement scholars, and in this chapter I focus on how movements connect to people and how they convince people to join the movement as well as how people move from interested participants to activists. Just as people live gendered lives and are shaped by gendered constraints and expectations, the processes that bring them into social movements are also gendered. I end the chapter by discussing how emotions are central to all these processes and
