Transnational Feminism and Gender Justice: New Measures and Exploratory Findings

• In Event: Women's and Feminist Movements

Abstract

Understanding the way in which feminist activists are able to shape international institutions and draw public attention to issues related to women’s equality requires the investigation of both domestic and transnational women’s movements. Transnational activism for women’s rights interacts with international institutions, domestic activism, and other indirect and mediated causal pathways. However, the relationship between transnational pressure and domestic movements can be complex and empirical accounts of the relationship between transnational and domestic feminist activity can be limited. This research seeks to add to the literature on transnational feminism and gender justice with an expansive dataset on domestic women’s movements, with more coverage of the global South. We argue the relationship between global pressures and domestic movements can be more complex than current accounts allow. We ask: When does transnational pressure advance women’s rights, and when does it undermine them? How important are transnational activists relative to domestic activists in sparking change? This paper aims to tackle this challenge in an exploratory way. It uses a new database of domestic feminist mobilization as well as a broader set of measures of transnational feminism, including social media data on themes of economic equality, violence against women, and sexual harassment. Our analysis sets out to 1) empirically distinguish the domestic from transnational dimensions of feminist activism 2) explore some basic hypotheses about the relationship between these different dimensions, with an eye to illuminating the likely causal pathways and relative impact of domestic and transnational feminism on gender justice.

Authors

• S. Laurel Weldon, Simon Fraser University

• Amber N Lusvardi, Purdue University

• Summer Forester, Carleton College

• Kaitlin Kelly-Thompson, Tufts University