Title: Gender and Social Movements - Sociology of Gender - iResearchNet
Headings: Gender and Social Movements
Gender and Social Movements
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Content: These factors all vary according to race, class, and nationality as well as gender, and also change over time; such variations account for some of the differences in the level and form of women’s mobilization cross culturally and historically. Further, social movements emerge along gendered lines because they emerge from gendered preexisting organizations and networks (Taylor 1999). For example, feminist organizing during the late 1960s in the US emerged partially from the Civil Rights Movement, in which women gained organizing experience and an ideology opposing inequality, but also faced gender barriers to full participation. However, grievances and networks based on race and class cross cut those based on gender. For African American and Latina women during the same era, their connections to mixed sex movements around race mitigated their interest in a mixed race movement around gender. Instead, they advocated for women’s interests within mixed sex movements (Roth 2004). Similarly, international women’s conferences sponsored by the United Nations have illustrated how women in third world countries define their interests quite differently from those in the highly industrialized global North. Second, movements’ collective identities, or group definitions, are gendered. Some social movements directly try to change the definition associated with their group, as feminist movements, for example, try to change what it means to be a woman.