Feminist Organizing For Change

Focusing on the practices, ideology, organizations, and strategies of the women's liberation movement, this study documents and analyzes the struggle of the contemporary women's movement in Canada. It begins with a detailed history of the "second wave" (post-1960), and makes a primary distinction between grass-roots and institutionalized feminism. Emphasizing the former, the book reveals a part of feminist organizing that has often been invisible.

This collection of twenty-six original essays looks at contemporary feminist organizations, how they've survived, the effects of their work, the problems they face, the strategies they develop, and where the women's movement is headed. The contributors, leading feminist scholars from nine social science disciplines, examine a wide variety of local feminist organizations, past and preset, illuminating the struggles of feminist organizers and activists. In the series Women in the Political Economy, edited by Ronnie J. Steinberg.

Two decades of neoliberalism have destroyed a structured, pan-regional feminist movement in Canada. As a result, new generations of feminists have come to age without ever seeing the force that an organized social movement can have in democratic society. They have never benefited from the knowledge, the debates, the actions, the mass mobilizations or the leadership that all accompany a social movement and instead organize in decentralized silos. As a result, government and corporate leaders have co-opted feminism to turn it into something that can be bought, sold, or used to attract voters. Campaigns like #BeenRapedNeverReported, #MeToo, the SlutWalks and the Canadian Women’s marches, while important, don’t yet have the organized power to bring the changes that activists seek to make in society. In Take Back The Fight, Nora Loreto examines the state of modern feminism in Canada and argues that feminists must organize to take back feminism from politicians, business leaders and journalists who distort and obscure its power. Furthermore, Loreto urges today’s activists to overcome the challenges that sank the movement decades ago, to stop centering whiteness as the quintessential woman’s experience, and to find ways to rebuild the communities that have been obliterated by neoliberal economic policies.

Preface Introduction: Feminist Activism in Canada Jeri Dawn Wine and Janice L. Ristock Section I Frameworks and Strategies for Social Change Introduction 1. Feminist Practice: A New Appro

Focusing on the practices, ideology, organizations, and strategies of the women's liberation movement, this study documents and analyzes the struggle of the contemporary women's movement in Canada. It begins with a detailed history of the "second wave" (post-1960), and makes a primary distinction between grass-roots and institutionalized feminism. Emphasizing the former, the book reveals a part of feminist organizing that has often been invisible.

Feminist Organizing Across the Generations spans almost 60 years of feminist history and traces the evolution of feminist activism from the 1960s until the present. Using the Philadelphia chapter of the National Women's Organization as a starting point, Karen Bojar explores how feminist organizing was unfolding in similar ways across the county. The book examines the enormous energy put into building feminist service organizations such as women's shelters and rape crisis centers which were to have a profound impact on major social institutions, health care delivery and the justice system. The book also looks at the differences between the organizing strategies of "second wave" feminists and those of the 21st century. Much 21st-century feminist organizing is taking place outside of explicitly feminist groups, with young feminists bringing a gender justice perspective to a range of racial, economic and climate justice organizations. This book is suitable for students and scholars in women's and gender history, political history and gender studies.

5. Forming a Movement Wave