Women Leading Social Movements: What Drives Them?

• In Event: Women out Front: Activism, Engagement, and Attitudes

Short Description

What drives some women to get out in front, mobilize others, and make more than just noise? Hear about and discuss research on female activists from three authoritarian, patriarchal, post-Soviet, or martially-ruled countries — Bulgaria, Armenia, and Jordan — who are working to establish new, stable, civil societies.

Detailed Abstract

What are the characteristics of the women who get out in front, who spread the word, who create or approve the words, images, and behaviors that persuade; who stands behind them, who makes the machinery turn? Are they the same kinds of women that stood up for women’s suffrage, birth control, temperance, wage rights, rights to education, marriage equality, gay rights, and reproductive rights? What affect does the media have on shaping reactions to these women? To these women-led movements? What does this mean for women who aspire to being leaders, to being activists?

In our current American and international environment, this is timely. There have been copious social and political movements started by women, but the worldwide (at least for developed countries) focus on one set of goals about the lives of women and the people they care for, at one particular time and many, many places, is a new phenomenon. All major news outlets have reported on the Women’s March on January 21, 2017. Time Magazine is carrying on its cover just this week a story called “The Resistance Rises: How a March Becomes a Movement.” The call for Sister Marches, the formal website that indicates the formation of an organization with eight identified rights – reproductive, civil, disability, LGTBQIA, workers’, and immigrant rights, environmental justice, and ending violence – all under the central platform of creating “a society in which women…. are free and able to care for and nurture their families, however they may be formed, in safe and healthy environments free from structural impediments” (https://www.womensmarch.com/principles), the 20 plus members of the national committee and 68 or so others who are strategic advisors, or who head activities such as outreach, “influencer engagement,” production, social media, communication, digital operations, youth and disability engagement, among other things, indicates a strong organization with staying power. Nearly 300 partners, small and large, including the AFL-CIO, other unions, various YMCAs, Economic Policy Institute, women’s organizations, children’s, Hispanic, Asian, survivors’, deaf, environmental, social work, Jewish, Muslim, Baptist, mothers’, Episcopal, and Black groups and organizations have all joined hands in this movement. This organization was formed quickly and in reaction to the Trump presidency and the demonization of many groups and peoples, the insults to women and minorities, and to address the fears so recently being faced by Americans and so many others (https://www.womensmarch.com). The Sister Marches website announced that 673 marches in solidarity were occurring around the world on January 21, 2017, that included 5 million people, and it provides a list of each of them with contact information, maps, and brief notes (https://www.womensmarch.com/sisters/). In many of these, American women, visitors and ex-pats helped to organize the events.

Using ethnographical methods to study narratives, images, and social media and secondary interview data and observations, transcripts, and videos and photos, I am sorting and finding common themes. I may collect biographical data, and interview some, on the women who have the great ideas and with the others with which they have shared their ideas to prompt action and to become activists. How do they see themselves? How do others see them? What theories about women and activism, women and leadership, women as feminine type, and types of advocacy explain this current phenomenon? Are there new theories that can be constructed and tested about women or are these movements basically the same, have the same trajectories, and just use different methods for spreading the word and the fervor as a hundred women-led movements have in this country in the last 400 years? Or not? Theories explored range from classical social movement theory to Political Process Theory (or political opportunity theory).

I am focusing on the active American women’s movements today to understand the way women speak, present themselves, articulate a cause, create a movement, and make demands. In tandem, I am looking at how these women are portrayed by media. I am also planning to note how women of different races and ethnicities, in various regions of the US, and with what kinds of causes create a following for advocates for their causes.

Participant

• Elizabeth Stork, Robert Morris University