Title: Gender and Social Movements - Sociology of Gender - iResearchNet
Headings: Gender and Social Movements
Gender and Social Movements
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Content: Because gender is a central feature of social structure, culture, and daily life, all movements are gendered. The major elements of social movements are their emergence and recruitment, collective identities, frames or discourses, organizations, tactics or actions, and external contexts or political opportunities. Each of these elements is gendered. First, movements’ emergence and processes of recruitment are gendered because the status of women and men shapes their differential ability and willingness to organize on their own behalf. Gendered factors such as family structures and responsibilities, access to higher education, paid employment, and fertility rate all affect recruitment and participation in activism. 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.