Organising Feminisms

This study of feminism, equity and change in the academy is based on interviews with 40 feminist academics and students in Britain, Sweden and Greece. The research attempts to decode and disentangle gendered message systems and the matrix of power relations in the academy. It consists of feminist readings of the micro-processes of everyday practices. Change is interrogated in relation to feminist pedagogy, equity, organizational culture, policies and discourses of New Right reform, mass expansion and new managerialism.

McMillan provides the first detailed account of the women's anti-violence movement in Europe, from an international comparative perspective. Exploring how feminists have responded to violence in society, this study also examines how they have organized their response, their achievements and the factors that have facilitated their calls to 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.

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.

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.

A unique book, tracing forty years of anti-racist feminist thought In a moment of rising authoritarianism, climate crisis, and ever more exploitative forms of neoliberal capitalism, there is a compelling and urgent need for radical paradigms of thought and action. Through interviews with key revolutionary scholars, Bhandar and Ziadah present a thorough discussion of how anti-racist, anti-capitalist feminisms are crucial to building effective political coalitions. Collectively, these interviews with leading scholars including Angela Y. Davis, Silvia Federici, and many others, trace the ways in which black, indigenous, post-colonial and Marxian feminisms have created new ways of seeing, new theoretical frameworks for analysing political problems, and new ways of relating to one another. Focusing on migration, neo-imperial militarism, the state, the prison industrial complex, social reproduction and many other pressing themes, the range of feminisms traversed in this volume show how freedom requires revolutionary transformation in the organisation of the economy, social relations, political structures, and our psychic and symbolic worlds. The interviews include Avtar Brah, Gail Lewis and Vron Ware on Diaspora, Migration and Empire. Himani Bannerji, Gary Kinsman, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, and Silvia Federici on Colonialism, Capitalism, and Resistance. Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Avery F. Gordon and Angela Y. Davis on Abolition Feminism.

The past twenty years have witnessed a renewal of interest in feminist activism on both sides of the Atlantic. In part this has been a response to neoliberal and neoconservative attacks, both implicit and explicit, on the gains made by feminists during the 1960s and 70s. This study adds a comparative dimension to the ongoing analysis of feminism and feminist activism by mapping, analysing and theorising third wave feminisms in the US and Britain. A key addition to Gender and Politics literature, it explores third wave feminisms by situating them within a specific political context, neoliberalism, and in relation to feminist theories of intersectionality, both of which present radical opportunities and practical challenges for feminism and the feminist movement. Elizabeth Evans is Lecturer in Politics at the University of Bristol. Her research focuses on gender and politics, including engagement with formal processes and political activism. She has published widely on aspects of feminism, gender and politics, and her previous book, Gender and the Liberal Democrats, was published in 2011.

This book addresses the theme of the history of internationalism in feminist theory and praxis, covering such topics as the historical concept of internationalism within feminism and women's movements; the nature of historical shifts within feminist movements, and challenges to internationalism within feminism by women of colour and by women from colonised or formerly colonised countries.