Gender and Social Movements. Jo Reger

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 are again often shaped by understandings of the gender binary.

Chapter 4 – Guiding Social Change: When Gender Shapes Movement Trajectories – examines some of the key aspects of how social movements determine their course of action – through leaders, strategies, and tactics. As participants in movements draw on their understandings of gender, they also shape who is identified as a leader and how they lead. The work on the civil rights movement is particularly important here with feminist researchers identifying how women have led even if they weren’t identified as doing so. Shaped by the people within them, movements, strategies, and tactics often draw on conventional ideas of femininity and masculinity as well as transgressing them in the work for social change. I conclude by noting that some gendered strategies and tactics are hidden, and only emerge when viewed through a gender lens.

      In Chapter 5 – Legacies of Rise and Resistance: How Gender Sparks Change and Backlash – I examine how gender identities shift and develop in society and how some work to resist those changes. Here I examine how gender as a personal identity does not always align itself to the binary. I start by examining some of the tensions around gender and same-sex marriage and then examine how trans, gender non-binary, and gender fluid people move beyond the binary and how social movements have played a role aiding those identities as well as resisting them. I then explore how challenges to conventional gender norms bring backlash and countermovements seeking to undo the changes. This resistance to undoing aspects of gender illustrates once again its power in shaping society. The final chapter – Conclusion: Where Do We Go from Here? – draws on the case of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo to examine the multiple ways that gender intertwines in social movements as illustrated throughout the book. The story of these grandmothers, abuelas, in Argentina, highlight the key themes of this book. Drawing on their status as grandmothers, the activists illustrate how gendered people organize in (largely) same-sex movements and draw on gendered networks, identities and ideas to organize protest. They drew on a strategy that infused non-violent protest with norms of chivalry toward the elderly and women. They were able to continue their protests because of gendered stereotypes about women and those stereotypes kept their movement alive. Overall, the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and their activism serves as a powerful example of the intertwining of gender and social movements. I conclude by noting where more research and attention is needed as scholars continue to intertwine gender and social movements.

Sources to Explore

      Collins, Patricia Hill. 1990. Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. Boston, MA: Unwin Hyman.

      Connell, Raewyn. 1987. Gender and power: Society, the person and sexual politics. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

      Fisher, Dana. 2019. American resistance: From the women’s march to the blue wave. New York: Columbia University Press.

      Kantor, Jodi, and Megan Twohey. 2019. She said: Breaking the sexual harassment story that helped ignite a movement. New York: Penguin.

      Lorber, Judith. 1994. Paradoxes of gender. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

      Lucal, Betsy. 1999. What it means to be gendered me: Life on the boundaries of a dichotomous gender system. Gender & Society 13: 6 (December): 781–797.

      Vegh, Sandor, Michael D. Ayers, and Martha McCaughey (eds.) 2003. Cyberactivism: Online activism in theory and practice. New York: Routledge.

      Westbrook, Laurel, and Kristen Schilt. 2014. Doing gender, determining gender: Transgender people, gender panics, and the maintenance of the sex/gender/sexuality system. Gender & Society 28: 1 (February): 32–57.

Questions to Consider

      1 Define what sociologists mean by gender and how it is a part of the social structure.

      2 What does it mean to be held accountable for our gender? How can this process of policing gender give rise to social movements?

      3 What are some of the perspectives on how social movements form? What seems necessary for this to happen?

      4 What social movements are happening in your community? In the world? Can you see how gender is an aspect of these movements?

      5 What is the relationship between gender, social movements, and inequality?

Reflection

      What are some of the ways in which you have experienced gender inequality? Do you feel as though there are movements that address these experiences?