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South Africa has a patriarchal tendency to treat womxn as beneficiaries of protest and activism rather than as agents in the construction of a new socio-political order and as drivers of change through protest. This paper examines the internal gender tensions within South Africa's 2015-2016 student movements including how these tensions materialised publicly; in a sample of university campuses and in the media. The complex particularities of young black womxn who are agitating for an intersectional approach to protest - one that privileges gender - and an end to patriarchy and misogynoir in these movements is observed. Content analysis of self-articulated goals, mission statements on various media and case studies are detailed where black womxn activists constitute majority membership in movements even as they remain disenfranchised in their operationalising. To counter marginality, black womxn student activists' interventions demonstrate a new radical political autonomy that embraces an inclusive feminist ideology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How women remember, represent and write about their own lives and each other's lives is a central problem in the field of feminist auto/biography. Eglantyne Jebb (1876-1928) did not live long enough to write her own life story, but she is known as the founder of the Save the Children Fund in 1919 and as the author of the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, which was adopted by the League of Nations in 1924. Women who had a great deal invested in the telling of Jebb's life story provide the only accounts we have of her life. This article contributes to the field of feminist auto/biography by providing a fuller depiction of the life of Eglantyne Jebb. Today, the value of Jebb's private writing lies in its wit and honesty. Her letters and diaries illustrate the familiar hard and heroic struggle to accommodate to the ordinary and extraordinary demands of family relationships, the search for adult intimacy, the desire for a meaningful career and the acceptance, in the final years of her life, of new challenges and possibilities whereby Eglantyne Jebb became a notable humanitarian and children's rights activist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper begins with a theoretical-political positioning regarding globaliz­ation, as a multidimensional phenomenon, loaded with power relations with unequal and ambivalent impacts producing dramatic exclusions but, at the same time, opening possibilities for profound changes in the gender order and in social subjectivities. The effects of globalization on social movements have also been multiple and ambivalent, producing fragmentation and particularization but at the same impelling new ways of articulation, more flexible and inclusive, as well as mobilizations at a global level oriented to 'dispute' its hegemonic contents and struggle for an alternative globalization. In the second part, the paper analyses the new dynamics of intervention of feminist movements that follow from this new reality. The Social World Forum is a privileged space for this analysis, due to the convergence of new tendencies and new ways of existence of feminisms, expressing the new conflicts and challenges faced by feminisms in the collective construction of alternative proposals towards globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a meditation on the relationship between feminist objects, institutional repositories and feminist scholarship. It narrates my encounter with second wave feminist objects in Adelaide, focusing on a handful of badges, a poster, a book and a series of banners. All date from the 1970s or 1980s and are located in different South Australian libraries. Each encounter is framed by its location in a particular collection, but also by my position, as someone who is external to the women's liberation movement yet well versed in the feminist canon taught at Australian universities. By narrating my encounter with a series of feminist objects I reconsider generational relationships and past feminisms. Drawing on Kate Eichhorn's redeployment of the feminist “scrap heap” and Joan Scott's call to reimagine feminism's history as a “circulating critical passion”, this article understands contact with the activist feminist “archive” as a way to reposition and redeploy late twentieth century feminisms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This introductory paper traces a century of 4 waves of feminism from a psychoanalytic perspective. The first phase focused on political change as the suffragette movement was undertaken at the turn of the 20th century by feminist activists who lobbied successfully for women's right to vote; the second phase, a broad sociopolitical-cultural movement located in the 1960s and 1970s, focused on consciousness-raising around gender issues, women's liberation (Betty Friedan, Kate Millet, Simone de Beauvoir, Bela Abzug, Gloria Steinem), and job and economic parity. With sexual freedom and job opportunities more established for women, the third phase evolved in the 1980s and 1990s, emphasizing women exploring gender pluralities; “having it all”; and juggling career, sex, and motherhood. The fourth wave moved into the 21st century as women turned toward spiritual concerns about the planet and all its beings, putting themselves in the service of the world, ecology, and the downtrodden. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on how culture and ritual in social movements can be forms of protest or conduits to contentious politics. Based on the Montreal cases of the anglophone women's performance scene in the 1990s and the 2000 World March of Women campaign, we argue that the context in which culture is produced and consumed affects its political character and potential. Networks among activists and organizations in social movement communities affect the extent to which participants interpret and use cultural productions and rituals to support political change. Movement campaigns play an important role in giving political meaning to cultural rituals and providing opportunities for participants in cultural activities to become involved in contentious political action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The central purpose of this paper is to outline what I take to be the distinctive contributions that a feminist understanding of politics can offer to the study of social movements in general and the “anti-globalisation movement” in particular. In other words, my objective is not to provide a theoretical or empirical account of anti-globalisation politics but rather to explore how one would go about constructing such an account if one allowed feminist insights to guide one's research. In this sense, then, I am interested in drawing out the kinds of questions that feminists would ask about this movement, the lines of inquiry that they would open up and the personal and academic worries and problems that may arise while pursuing this research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although health-based social movements organized by grassroots activists have a rich history in impacting health and social policy, few systematic studies have addressed their policy change efforts or effectiveness. In this article, the authors trace how four health-based social movements-the women's health movement, ACT UP, breast cancer, and needle exchange-influenced health and social policy legislation. The activists' efforts wrested control of ‘authoritative knowledge’ that had once been the sole domain of the ‘experts’ with advanced medical training. They used this knowledge to empower ‘average’ people with medical information, promote self help and engage in civil disobedience, which led to changes in healthcare delivery, drug testing and approval, and increased research funds for HI V/AIDS, breast cancer, and needle exchange. The activists' efforts led to other health-based social movements that are currently, or will become, issues for health and social policy analysts in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dr. Padma Venkataraman, alias A. Mangai, is an Indian academic, activist, actor, playwright, and a director. This conversation with her draws on the interface between feminism and theatre in the Indian context. It refers to Mangai's dramatic and critical oeuvre, primarily focusing on the prominent directorial ventures, such as Pacha Mannu (New Earth, 1996), Aanmai o Aanmai (Macho o Macho, 2010), Vakkumoolam (Testimony, 2013), along with the critical study on Indian feminist theatre, titled Acting Up: Gender and Theatre in India, 1979 onwards (2015). She candidly talks about women's participation in a genre dominated by men, the aesthetics of the street theatre, the Dravidian movement's gendered discourse, patriarchal indifference towards women's works, feminist dramaturgy, and sustenance of theatre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Filipino Catholic nuns became formidable activists in the women's movement as women's studies teachers, and as leaders and members of transnational organizations. This article argues that the nuns' unique location in the interstices - as transnational feminists who moved constantly from the local to the international - was what made them effective activists. Their continuous movements impacted on their subjectivities as feminist women. A peripatetic lifestyle gave them multiple perspectives and the credentials to speak for and about the many aspects of the Filipina post-colonial condition. They had local knowledge, Western knowledges and global links - assets they mined to create a unique eclectic perspective to their activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the various ways the Kurdish women's movement has impacted feminism in the Turkish context. Against the background of the problematic historical relationship between Turkish and Kurdish women's rights activists, the article explores the shift in perceptions of, attitudes towards and relations of feminists in Turkey with the Kurdish women's movement. The article shows that a 'new generation of feminists' in Turkey appreciates and is inspired by the Kurdish women's movement, and rejects the Kemalist and nationalist undertones of earlier generations. Without wanting to belittle on-going nationalism and the rise of women's cadres linked to the authoritarian Turkish regime, the article analyses the various ways the intersectional long-term struggle of Kurdish women is being perceived, recognized and critically engaged with by many Turkish feminist activists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article tracks the coming together of anti-apartheid activism, feminism and humanism in the life and work of the social anthropologist and scholar-activist Iona Simon Mayer (1923-). Her biography is acutely awkward given her inner conflict and subsequent scholarly debate about the degree of acknowledgement that was due to her as a collaborator with her husband Philip during his fieldwork in Kenya in the late 1940s, but especially in the analysis and writing of Townsmen or Tribesmen (1961), a famous ethnography on the resilience of 'Red' Xhosa culture in East London. The article seeks to balance a recognition of the creative work that Iona achieved with her much-loved husband across decades of joint fieldwork, analysis and writing with her hitherto entirely unacknowledged independent contributions to African ethnography, closely associated with her involvement in a Black Sash feminist circle in Grahamstown of the 1970s. Iona's feminism was of a more modern mould than that of the South African-born women who pioneered the field of social anthropology in the region in that it involved a vehement critique of patriarchy in African culture, drawing creatively on a dynamic new literature on the anthropology of performance but articulated in a typically eloquent denunciation of 'hard-edged' authoritarian power structures. Above all, the article tracks what Mayer retrospectively identified as an inner tension between 'the intellectual' and 'the human' across her anthropological career, making a case for a liberating period of resolution through her inter-related work as an anti-apartheid activist and feminist anthropologist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how the activist identity is constructed within a local anti-austerity activist culture, how it is implicitly gendered, and the emotional implications of this. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 30 individuals engaged in local anti-austerity activism, the author argues that although presented as an abstract, genderless, individual, the 'ideal activist' is actually male. Despite participants defining activism broadly to include small acts in the everyday, the 'ideal activist' identity is narrowly defined by doing 'enough' of the 'right' type of activism - direct action. It is argued that this identity is easier to achieve for men than women, and that the negative emotional consequences of not achieving the identity are more likely to be experienced by women. The criterion of doing the 'right' amount of activism excludes those who cannot commit to constantly doing activism; women tend to face structural availability barriers to political participation, often related to caring responsibilities. The binary construction of direct action as 'real' activism versus online 'slacktivism' minimizes online activism, which is a form of accessible activism that women can combine with caring responsibilities. While women participants identify and challenge gendered barriers and exclusions to local anti-austerity activism, the implicit gendered nature of the 'ideal activist' identity and its damaging gendered consequences are not recognized, resulting in women feeling guilt and blaming themselves for their perceived failure to adequately perform the identity. This article thus reveals the complex ways that spaces of resistance can reinforce dominant gendered power structures, while ostensibly fighting against them. By utilising a feminist approach, the author establishes the importance of paying attention to the gendered differences between activist experiences in counter-hegemonic movements and contributes to understanding the complexities of the activist identity in the context of anti-austerity activism. Abbreviations: PA: the People's Assembly Against Austerity; BME: Black Minority Ethnic; LGBT: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2012, a group of young activists changed the landscape of the Chinese feminist movement. These activists placed women’s rights in the mainstream public discourse by drawing the media’s attention to their “performance art”. This study compares the intergenerational differences between China’s first generation of women’s NGOs, which were mostly founded or flourished in the wake of the Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing, and a new generation that burst on the scene in 2012. The study argues that their main differences lie in their mobilization models and their ability to access key political resources, both of which were heavily influenced, and even decided, by their relationship with the state. Moreover, the change in the relationship between the state and feminist movements is reflected in the differences in the relationship with the media of the two generations of feminist movements. Because of the differences in their organizational models, resource conditions, and status, the two generations of feminists adopted different media strategies in their promotion of women’s rights. Using the “performance art” of the “Occupy Men’s Toilet” campaign as an example, we examine the media strategies employed by young feminists and illustrate how they legitimated the movements, aroused public attention, imposed pressure from the outside, and finally gained policy responses from the government. The study proposes the tripartite relationship between the state, media, and the two generations of the women’s movement in China, and concludes that the relationship between media and the women’s movements examined here was influenced and even decided by their respective relationships with the state. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The author discusses the role politics plays in her life as a sociologist and activist. She discusses her discovery of feminism and the ranges of feminist perspectives from the conventional to the near anarchic. She compares her experience as an activist in Great Britain and in the National Council of the Women of Canada and how they took on issues such as divorce law, reproductive health, and gender parity and how real dialogue with the state can lead to real change.

This text narrates the writer's story as a bisexual activist and, through it, also the story of the bisexual movement in Israel so far. In addition, the text endeavors to highlight the strands of militarism, violence and racism in Israeli culture, with a focus on the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the Palestinian people. This is meant to achieve two things: first, to deconstruct the false separation between the two fields of ‘LGBT rights’ and antiwar activism; and second, to promote the principles of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, encouraging solidarity with the Palestinian people and nonviolent struggle against the Israeli occupation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In their memoirs, American feminists Robin Morgan, Karla Jay, and Brenda Feigen note how their activism in the late 1960s-early 1970s brought them to the attention of the FBI and/or the CIA, with resultant voluminous security files. This surveillance suggests that the new political movement of women's liberation was, from its beginnings, perceived as a risk to society, joining older political threats such as communism. Surveillance of women's movement activists also occurred in Australia by both federal and state agencies. In this essay we use one particular example of the security police file — the Queensland Police Special Branch file of the Australian socialist-feminist activist and English literature academic, Carole Ferrier — to explore just how security agencies tried to understand and record the life of a socialist-feminist in the 1970s and 1980s. That is, what did they make of this radically new form of politics and political subjectivity? In this article we position the secret police dossier as a form of political biography, and hence expand the forms and subject matter typically included within the genre. We argue that not only can the Special Branch file be read as a form of biography of Carole Ferrier, but also as an unwitting autobiographical text of the Special Branch.1 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a comparison between the views of Turkish secular feminists and Islamist activists regarding the compability of Islam and feminism. It focuses on the case of Turkey where a strong secular tradition and a rival Islamist movement exist. The political standpoints of secular feminists and Islamist activists with regard to this compatibility are discussed. The article also talks about the perception of Islamist activists and feminist activists about the ideology of each movement.

The aim of this article is to examine senior women's involvement experience in Quebec, Canada. Study results are based on a qualitative methodology, and shed light on family history and continuity in the involvement trajectory, diversity in terms of group type and involvement practices, and gender differences in involvement. The meaning that older women attribute to their involvement is also addressed, including attitudes toward feminism The discussion highlights the extent to which older women's involvement has been marked by their life trajectories, above and beyond their age. In sum, their involvement in the private and public spheres is quite impressive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the development of feminist politics in the U.S. According to the author, the success and disappointments during the late 1960s have initiated and changed the condition of the most developing era in the country and the second batch and grassroots of feminism was established from the level of laborers towards socialist activism. The second wave of feminism was given the privilege to have greater access to work environment and feminist activism which alters the essential structures of legal and economic status. In addition, feminist activism is important in the suppression and regulation of fetal rights, sexual harassment and violence against women.

This article illustrates the intersections between architecture and agency in Subhash Camp, a squatter settlement in New Delhi, by 'situating activism in place'. It highlights the significance of place in social action by examining the architecture of everyday places - the house, the street and the square - as the sites of both individual transformations and collective consciousness. Through observations of the activities of and interviews with members of Samudayik Shakti, a women's organisation and a men's panchayat, this article highlights a number of related processes in Subhash Camp: how different women experienced different places through everyday spatial practices; how the spatial practices in these places were shaped by different social structures at different scales, from the family to the state; how the architecture of these places was significant both as sites of control and of emancipation of women's bodies; and how this dynamic contributed to the making of social action in Subhash Camp. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The assertion of Dalit interests has posed new challenges for the women's movement in India, which has been criticised for its lack of engagement with Dalit women and their interests. Some women's activists have begun to respond to this critique. Yet this article argues that caste identity still determines the place that women activists – upper caste and Dalit – are given by villagers in their fieldwork and within women's organisations. The article also explores how Dalit women are using their caste identity, alongside their identity as village-level activists, to further their interests beyond the realm of women's activism. By doing so, they are celebrating their personal experiences as political. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1859 Jessie Boucherett, the daughter of a Lincolnshire landowner possessed of an independent income, was inspired by press discussions of the need to find alternative occupations for women to make contact with the women who were already spreading this message through the English Woman’s Journal. With their rather grudging support she founded a society, which still exists, to further this aim, the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women (now the Society for Promoting the Training of Women). Using the records of this Society, now housed at Girton College, Cambridge, this article looks at the way commitment to this cause allowed a woman from a wealthy, high Tory, landed background to turn herself in six years into the feminist who put up the initial money for the women’s suffrage campaign, and went on to be a leading figure in campaigns to reform the married women’s property laws and against legislation restricting women’s work. It examines in particular the use she made of her personal wealth to direct the strategies of the activist groups to which she belonged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decade there has been much debate within IR/political theory about the nature and status of knowledge with much of the tension revolving around the conflicting positions of so called `modernist' and `postmodernist' scholars. This article aims to critically evaluate the insights of both these approaches to knowledge in light of feminist theory and the practices of one social movement, that is, the women's reproductive rights movement. The article argues that any understanding of the nature and sources of knowledge claims deployed within movements needs, on the one hand, to draw from both these perspectives -- rather than choose between them -- and, on the other, to reach beyond them. More specifically, it argues that we need to learn from feminist theory and explore different sources of knowledge which include, but are not limited to, reason. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the efforts made by the journal "Capitalism Nature Socialism," to support social equity. A first step has been to gather together a group of ecofeminist editors, people who are both activists and internationally published authors in the field. They in turn, are inviting activist women and members of organizations like EcoPolitics, the National Women's Studies Association, the Global Studies Association and the International Association for Feminist Economics, to participate in en/gendering the journal's ecosocialist pages.

In the years following the end of the cold war in 1989, Western feminist scholars and activists expressed disappointment in the failure of the newly democratic Eastern and Central European countries to sustain mainstream women's rights movements and achieve a marked increase in women's participation within the new political parties and political life in general. The authors, historians of Hungarian women's movements with a broad East-West perspective, offer a novel explanation for this phenomenon. Following an outline of the main stages of Hungarian women's movements and women's political participation, they focus on two instances in twentieth-century Hungarian history that resulted in a rapid transition from anti-democratic regimes to liberal, parliamentary systems: the 1918 bourgeois democratic revolution and the 1990 re-introduction of free parliamentary elections. Examining these two turning points in recent Hungarian history, separated by 70 years, as case studies of women's activism, the authors propose a new, critical re-evaluation of the notion of separate spheres, offering a timely if co-incidental comment on the recent debate in the Journal of Women's History . 2 Research for this article had been completed by the time of the publication of the Spring 2003 issue of the Journal of Women's History , 15 (1), devoted to "Rethinking Public and Private". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many development organizations have signed up to a vision of human development regardless of age, class, creed and sexual orientation. This article discusses diversity and difference and their importance for development organizations. The author shows the implications of diversity for activists engaged in coalition building as means of addressing marginalization and poverty. Differences between women's interests from gender interests are analyzed as well as the processes by which these organizations address diversity.

Efforts to mainstream a gender perspective in global public policy have been prompted by the proliferation of transnational networking among women's movements. Collaboration among feminist researchers, advocates and policymakers is making gender analysis part of the routine practices and institutions of global governance. For feminist scholars of international relations, gender mainstreaming in global public policy opens up an important new area for critical scrutiny. How do feminist ideas about gender get translated into global policy? To what extent is gender mainstreaming transforming policy outcomes and the process of policymaking? Here, I explore the factors that have given rise to gender mainstreaming across nation- states and international organizations. I also consider those factors that currently serve to constrain and weaken the effectiveness of mainstreaming initiatives from a feminist perspective. I conclude that gender mainstreaming is an open-ended and potentially transformative project that depends on what feminist scholars, activists and policymakers collectively make of it. The major question raised by this article is not how feminist scholars and activists can avoid cooptation by powerful institutions, but whether we can afford not to engage with such institutions, when the application of gender analysis in their policymaking is clearly having political effects beyond academic and feminist communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we contend that social movement theory has predominantly analyzed social movement organizations (SMOs) from a reform perspective, emphasizing movement participants' demands to be recognized by, and incorporated into, the dominant culture. While for many SMOs this has certainly been the case, we argue that it is an inadequate model for the study of radical social movement organizations (RSMOs). When we look at RSMO participants' self-defined goals and objectives, we find that they tend to focus on a radical restructuring of the system rather than incorporation into that system. We therefore propose an alternative theoretical model for understanding RSMOs, utilizing ideal type characteristics for the internal structure, ideology, tactics, methods of communication, and measures of success that differentiate such organizations from their more moderate, reformist counterparts. Through the use of primary sources, we provide evidence that RSMOs, such as the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and various radical second-wave feminist organizations, would be better understood through such an alternative theoretical model. Other RSMOs could be similarly redefined through this model, thereby acknowledging their intentional differences from moderate SMOs and allowing them to be evaluated on their own terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the strategies and identities of political activists involved in the Russian women's movement. History of women's movements in the country; Types of activists; Orientation to local needs; Perceptions on women in politics; Views on gender issues.