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The Women’s Movement and Indonesia’s Transition to Democracy

Rachel Rinaldo

in Activists in Transition: Progressive Politics in Democratic Indonesia

This chapter assesses the impact of the rise of these conservative Islamic countermovements on activism in support of women's rights. After all, women not only played an important role in the push ... More

This chapter assesses the impact of the rise of these conservative Islamic countermovements on activism in support of women's rights. After all, women not only played an important role in the push for democracy but were able to see through significant reforms for women during reformasi. But the same conditions that have made it possible for progressive women activists, religious and secular, to make these gains contributed also to the rise of conservative Islamic groups. These groups' values are directly threatened by a vibrant women's movement. This chapter argues that the movement's ideological divisions and its inability to mobilize a mass base—along with the changes brought about by decentralization—have made it difficult for the progressive women's movement to respond to more organized conservative forces.Less

What Is Feminist Peace?

Catia Cecilia Confortini

in Intelligent Compassion: The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and Feminist Peace

This chapter starts with a discussion about international relations (IR) theory’s understandings of peace as well as the relationship between peace and feminist IR, pointing at the need both to be ... More

This chapter starts with a discussion about international relations (IR) theory’s understandings of peace as well as the relationship between peace and feminist IR, pointing at the need both to be concerned about peace and to revisit its relationship to feminism. It highlights the importance of analyzing women’s peace activism to draw lessons for IR and feminism as well as the uniqueness of WILPF for this type of project. This is followed by historical background on WILPF, from its origins to the end of the Second World War. Finally, it locates the organization in the context of the post–WWII international liberal order as it was being shaped by the United States and its allies.Less

Learning from the Uterus Out: Abortion and Women's Health Activism in Chicago

in Bodies of Knowledge: Sexuality, Reproduction, and Women's Health in the Second Wave

This chapter examines the history of abortion and women's health activism in Chicago, Illinois. Health feminists first worked underground and provided abortions before their legalization in 1973, and ... More

This chapter examines the history of abortion and women's health activism in Chicago, Illinois. Health feminists first worked underground and provided abortions before their legalization in 1973, and later established clinics and activist organizations in the name of reproductive rights. The chapter suggests that the evolution of feminist health activism from a subversive illegal service to a vocal and visible network of women reveals the movement's heartfelt commitment to transforming health care and demonstrates the fractures and fatigue activists encountered as their efforts were repeatedly attacked by conservatives and by liberals who could not agree on political strategies and priorities.Less

Human Rights and Women’s Rights: The Appeal to an International Agenda in the Promotion of Women’s Equal Citizenship

Elizabeth Meehan

in Judges, Transition, and Human Rights

This chapter is concerned with human rights and women's rights. It shows how the European Union (EU) and the international human rights agenda have contributed to women's activism in efforts to ... More

This chapter is concerned with human rights and women's rights. It shows how the European Union (EU) and the international human rights agenda have contributed to women's activism in efforts to influence the design of devolved institutions in Great Britain. It re-evaluates the risk of universalism and looks at how the international human rights agenda has contributed to women's activism in efforts to influence the design of devolved institutions in Northern Ireland. The findings reveal that treating women's rights as human rights can contribute to breaks-through in circumstances that are hostile to women's interests.Less

Women’s Islamic Movements in the Making

Sherine Hafez

in An Islam of Her Own: Reconsidering Religion and Secularism in Women's Islamic Movements

This chapter lays out the main themes in the historical processes contextualizing women's Islamic activism in Egypt. It analyzes the relationship between the projects of secularization instituted by ... More

This chapter lays out the main themes in the historical processes contextualizing women's Islamic activism in Egypt. It analyzes the relationship between the projects of secularization instituted by colonial and nationalist politics in Egypt and the production of secular liberal citizens of the state. Women are positioned at the intersection of these relationships. Simultaneously bearing the symbols of tradition and modernity, they continue to be the target of ideological projects that shape Egyptian social values. Islamic women's activism embodies these trajectories, yet it also reconstitutes them in ways that reflect the inconsistencies, temporalities, and discontinuities in the mutual embeddedness of religion and secularism. An understanding of Egypt's particular historicity will shed some light on the processes shaping the desires of the women who engage in Islamic movements.Less

New Media/New Feminism(s): The Lebanese Women’s Movement Online and Offline

Nelia Hyndman-Rizk

in Women Rising: In and Beyond the Arab Spring

While the critical role of new media technologies in facilitating new social movements has been widely debated, fewer studies have collected empirical data on online campaigns in the Arab uprisings ... More

While the critical role of new media technologies in facilitating new social movements has been widely debated, fewer studies have collected empirical data on online campaigns in the Arab uprisings or asked activists themselves their views on the efficacy of online versus offline modes of social mobilization. In this chapter, Nelia Hyndman-Rizk contributes to the conversation by comparing online and offline women’s rights activism in Lebanon and examining two campaigns that employ both modes of social mobilization. The chapter asks whether new media technology has enabled the Lebanese women’s movement to enter a new phase in its development.Less

“The Negro Only Wanted a Chance to Live”: Civil Rights Activism in Postwar South Carolina

Cherisse Jones-Branch

in Crossing the Line: Women's Interracial Activism in South Carolina during and after World War II

Chapter 2 focuses on the post–World War II years and the early years of the 1950s, specifically on the formation and activism of women’s organizations. Although the national organizations of the YWCA ... More

Chapter 2 focuses on the post–World War II years and the early years of the 1950s, specifically on the formation and activism of women’s organizations. Although the national organizations of the YWCA and Church Women United mandated integration, segregated activism continued at the local level in South Carolina. As Brown v. Board of Education loomed over the South and South Carolina, black and white women prepared themselves and their communities for changes that might result from the decision. Even before 1954, black women and their organizations galvanized support among African Americans and led the campaign for Elmore v. Rice, which helped obtain voting rights for blacks and access to the state Democratic Party. This chapter also considers the activism of liberal whites like Judge J. Waties Waring and his wife Elizabeth and explores the difficulties they encountered when they challenged racial injustice and long-assumed white supremacy.Less

Conclusion

Frances C. Galt

in Women's Activism Behind the Screens: Trade Unions and Gender Inequality in the British Film and Television Industries

The final chapter draws together the key conclusions advanced within this book in relation to its three central themes: the operation of the gendered union structure, women’s union activism, and the ... More

The final chapter draws together the key conclusions advanced within this book in relation to its three central themes: the operation of the gendered union structure, women’s union activism, and the relationship between class and gender in the labour movement. Firstly, it argues that a gendered union structure was institutionalised from the union’s establishment and maintained through a belief system that women’s issues were not trade union issues. Secondly, it argues that separate self-organisation was essential to women’s activity within the gendered union structure as it provided an essential space and voice for women to discuss their gender-specific concerns, develop consciousness and skills and formulate policy. It further emphasises the importance of external feminist allies to women’s union activity. Thirdly, it argues that class differences between middle-class women in film and television production and working-class women in the laboratories informed the direction of women’s activity at its height during the 1970s and 1980s. This chapter then surveys the central arguments advanced in each chapter to illustrate these core conclusions. It concludes with a consideration of the practical implications of this research for campaigns against gender discrimination within the British labour movement and the film and television industries.Less

“How Shall I Sing the Lord’s Song?”: Reactions to Brown v. Board of Education in South Carolina

Cherisse Jones-Branch

in Crossing the Line: Women's Interracial Activism in South Carolina during and after World War II

Chapter 3 highlights South Carolina’s reaction to changes flowing from the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. It also explores the ways in which white and black women’s organizations ... More

Chapter 3 highlights South Carolina’s reaction to changes flowing from the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. It also explores the ways in which white and black women’s organizations increased, or in some cases limited, their activism and their affiliations with national organizations in reaction to the decision and the increased racial tensions throughout the state.Less

Feminist Practice: Social Movements and Urban Space

Daphne Spain

in Constructive Feminism: Women's Spaces and Women's Rights in the American City

This chapter reviews the Second Wave as one among many social movements that altered the use of urban space. New spatial institutions had become a hallmark of the Second Wave; creating them was a ... More

This chapter reviews the Second Wave as one among many social movements that altered the use of urban space. New spatial institutions had become a hallmark of the Second Wave; creating them was a practice feminists inherited from US social movements that preceded them. Throughout US history, for example, the rights of women and the rights of blacks have been closely linked. The suffrage movement had roots in nineteenth-century abolitionism similar to those that the mid-twentieth-century Second Wave shared with the civil rights movement. Turn-of-the-twentieth-century suffrage, settlement house, and temperance movements, all connected by women’s activism (or volunteerism, as it was called then), had symbolic and spatial implications. Meaningful spaces, both religious and secular, sheltered disenfranchised groups while they gained the momentum to fight for their rights.Less

Introduction: gender, nationalism and memory

Carrie Hamilton

in Women and ETA: The Gender Politics of Radical Basque Nationalism

This book aims to restore gender to a central position in the history of radical nationalism through a study of women's participation as members and supporters of Euskadi ta Askatasuna (ETA) during ... More

This book aims to restore gender to a central position in the history of radical nationalism through a study of women's participation as members and supporters of Euskadi ta Askatasuna (ETA) during the organisation's first two decades (1959 to 1982). In the absence of significant written records of women's participation in radical Basque nationalism, this study also depends on oral history interviews with former activists for evidence of the changing patterns of women's activism in ETA. The interviews explored in the book highlight the importance of feelings of love and happiness, often above anger and hatred, in memories of radical nationalist activists.Less

If We Got That Freedom: “Integration” and the Sexual Politics of Southern College Women, 1940–1960

Susan K. Cahn

in Connexions: Histories of Race and Sex in North America

This chapter examines how the discourse of democracy led female students at black, white, co-ed, and single-sex colleges to agitate against rules and regulations that solidified heterosexual norms. ... More

This chapter examines how the discourse of democracy led female students at black, white, co-ed, and single-sex colleges to agitate against rules and regulations that solidified heterosexual norms. It uncovers a moment in the early twentieth century when female students engaged in faux marriage ceremonies, in which women played the roles of groom, bride, bridesmaids, and presiding minister in full drag. Here, the chapter charts how these traditions faded in the postwar period, but in this transition, openings emerged to define new racial and sexual relations. Heterosexuality became a concerted, deliberate choice that did not naturally grow from various southern traditions. This transition also paved the way for increased women's activism in the South.Less