Women S Movements Facing The Reconfigured State

Examines the changing relationship between women's movements and states in Western Europe and North America.

The Women's Movement Inside and Outside the State argues that the mobilization and success of the U.S. women's movement cannot be fully understood without recognizing the presence of feminist activist networks inside the federal government. Utilizing in-depth interviews and historical sources, Lee Ann Banaszak's research documents the significant contributions that these insider activists made to the creation of feminist organizations and the vital roles that they played in the development and implementation of policies in many areas, including education, foreign policy, and women's health. Banaszak also finds that working inside government did not always co-opt or deradicalize these activists. Banaszak's research causes us to rethink our current understanding of many social movement concepts and processes, including political opportunities, movement institutionalization, and confrontational tactics, and it alters our conception of the interests and character of the American state.

Women's Movements in the Global Erais a path-breaking study of the genesis, growth, gains, and dilemmas of women's movements in countries throughout the world. Its focus is on the Global South, where women's movements have engaged in complex negotiations with national and international forces. It challenges widely held assumptions about the Western origins and character of local feminisms. All the authors locate women's movements within the terrain from which they emerged by exploring their relationships with the state, civil society, and other social movements. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the global scope and implications of feminism. Contents 1. Introduction Africa 2. South African Feminisms: A Coming of Age? (Elaine Salo) 3. "The Future Will Be Better Next Time": Opportunities and Challenges of the Zimbabwean Women's Movement (Shereen Essof, Ramagwana Rakajeka) Asia 4. The Women's Movement in Pakistan: Challenges and Achievements (Farida Shaheed) 5. Feminist Deliberative Politics in India: Some Reflections (Kalpana Kannabiran) 6. The Chinese Women's Movement in the Context of Globalization: Opportunities and Challenges (Naihua Zhang) Europe 7. Polish Feminism between the Local and the Global: A Task of Translation (Elzbieta Matynia) 8. Russian Women's Activism: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back (Lisa McIntosh Sundstrom) Latin America 9. Contemporary Feminisms in Brazil: Achievements, Shortcomings, and Challenges (Cecilia M. B. Sardenberg, Ana Alice AlcÁntara Costa) 10. Seeking Rights from the Left: Gender and Sexuality in Latin America (Elisabeth Friedman) 11. Towards a Culturally Situated Women Rights Agenda: Reflections from Mexico (R. AÍda HernÁndez Castillo) The Middle East 12. The Demobilization of the Palestinian Women's Movement: From Empowered Active Militants to Powerless and Stateless "Citizens" (Islah Jad) 13. The Women's Movement and Feminism in Iran: A Glocal Perspective (Nayereh Tohidi) The United States 14. Intersecting Oppressions: Rethinking Women's Movements in the U.S. (Julie Ajinkya)

This book provides a path-breaking study of the genesis, growth, gains, and dilemmas of women's movements in countries throughout the world. Its focus is on the global South, where women's movements have engaged in complex negotiations with national and international forces. It challenges widely held assumptions about the Western origins and character of local feminisms. The authors locate women's movements within the terrain from which they emerged by exploring their relationships with the state, civil society, and other social movements. This fully revised second edition contains six new chapters by leading scholars of women and gender studies, on both individual countries and on several major regions of the world? Europe, Africa, Latin America, and the Maghreb. This balanced coverage enables readers to identify regional patterns and also learn from in-depth case studies. Women's Movements in the Global Era is essential reading for anyone interested in the global scope and implications of feminism.

The Women’s Movement is usually referred to as if it were a constant, global phenomenon. There are women’s movements in Europe, North and South America, Africa, the Middle East, India, Japan and Australia, and many women and men assume that they are regional manifestations of the same thing, and share a common core. Susan Bassnett has lived and been involved in the struggles of the women’s movement in the United States, Italy and the United Kingdom, and has had extensive contacts with feminists in the German Democratic Republic. On the basis of her personal experiences and study of women’s history and literature in these countries she is able to present a striking picture of the variety of feminist aims, tactics and priorities in the four countries, and of the character of the women’s movement in four very different cultures. In Italy, she focuses on the violence of the women’s movement – its intellectualism and energy. In analysing the American women’s movement she dwells on its roots in the past, and its faith in pragmatic solutions. The GDR presents completely different questions, hinging on the relationship between state socialism and feminism. In the UK, Susan Bassnett finds herself returning to that all-pervasive aspect of British life – class, and its importance for feminists. Throughout, the author writes with a double commitment: first, to furthering our understanding of the diversity of aims of women’s movements and their common ground – the no-man’s land of female existence; second, to making her book as accessible as possible to all feminists, through drawing on her own personal experience of countries in which she has lived, worked, travelled, and made friends.

Written by leading women's movement scholars, this book is the first to systematically apply the idea of social movement abeyance to differing national and international contexts. Its starting point is the idea that the women's movement is over, an idea promoted in the media and encouraged by scholarship that regards disruptive action as a defining element of social movements. It goes on to compare the trajectories over the past 40 years of women's movements in Australia, Canada, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. Finally, it looks at the extension of feminist activism into supranational and subnational institutions—the global and the local—and into cyberspace. Comparing these diverse sites of political and social action illuminates some of the major opportunities and constraints that have impacted upon women’s movements. It advances our understanding of the lifecycles of social movements by examining the differing ways in which women's movements operate and sustain themselves over time and space, ways that often differ from those of male-led movements. The book also engages with the question of whether there is an on-going women's movement—with sufficient continuity to warrant description as such—by presenting the voices of young activists East and West. Filling an important gap in social movement research, this book will be of interest to sociologists, political scientists and gender studies scholars and researchers.

Although many of the social movements born in the 1960s and 1970s have expired, the feminist movement is one of the few survivors. Yet the relative infrequence of protests, demonstrations, and marches, the dissolution of the earlier consciousness-raising groups and the more audible self-criticism within the movement has signaled to some movement-watchers that contemporary feminism has spent its force. Obviously, there is a need to gauge exactly where the women's movement stands today. This book seeks to fill a gap in feminist scholarship by focusing on the women's movements and the different opportunities their political environments provide. Offering comparisons of the feminist movements in seven countries, the essays seek to assess the power and potential of the feminist movement in Western Europe and the United States. Author note:Mary Fainsod Katzensteinis Associate Professor of Government at Cornell University.Carol McClurg Muelleris Associate Professor of Sociology at Arizona State University, West.

In the face of injustice, people band together to work for change, and through their influence, what was once unthinkable becomes common. This title traces the history of the women?s rights movement in the United States, including the key players, watershed moments, and legislative battles that have driven social change. Iconic images and informative sidebars accompany compelling text that follows the movement from the work of early suffragists through feminists? work to end discrimination in the mid-twentieth century and up to the continuing challenges that still face the country today. Features include a glossary, selected bibliography, Web sites, source notes, and an index, plus a timeline and essential facts. Aligned to Common Core Standards and correlated to state standards. Essential Library is an imprint of ABDO Publishing Company.