The Global Women's Movement by Peggy Antrobus

Author:Peggy Antrobus [Antrobus, Peggy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781842770177
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Published: 2004-10-01T00:00:00+00:00

7 | Political strategies and dynamics of women’s organizing and feminist activism

Women engaged in organizing and acting for change regarding the conditions and position of women employ a variety of strategies that range from reformist to revolutionary. All strategies may be valid in specific circumstances and for particular purposes. This chapter looks critically at the political strategies and political dynamics of women’s organizations and feminist activism in organizing for change towards a more equitable and humane world. In analysing these strategies, I consider the lessons learned from the experience of the 1990s, and identify some of the tensions, shortcomings and limitations of the global movement.

I shall argue that, despite limitations, the strategies used by women in their organizing offer new and more varied possibilities for effective action. I will also argue that these forms of organizing draw strength from, and are specifically related to, the feminist politics and praxis used by leadership, and that this leadership is key to the achievement of the goals of women’s movements.

Although I divide the strategies into three categories, activist, institutional and crosscutting, they often overlap, or get applied at different stages of struggles. In the first category I would list consciousness-raising groups, women’s circles, coalition and alliance-building, global conferences and campaigns. In the second, research, analysis and advocacy, mainstreaming, monitoring and accountability. In the third, analysis, advocacy and networking, that cuts across the other two, often linking them.

Activist strategies

In my own analysis of women’s organizing I have identified six ‘spaces’: consciousness-raising groups, women’s circles, caucuses, coalitions, conferences and campaigns. I sometimes think of these as forming a continuum starting with the smallest most intimate group and extending to the mass campaign. Like a pebble dropped in water, the individual experience extends to progressively larger circles, incorporating, or being incorporated by, increasing diversity, until in the campaign the individual may find herself part of a mass movement of people who often have conflicting interests.

Consciousness-raising groups Feminist consciousness-raising is an important first step towards the identification and ‘naming’ of female subordination. Without this, activism can remain abstract, a purely intellectual notion of ‘oppression’ that fails to translate into lived experience and serious commitment to challenge female subordination. Although consciousness-raising is associated with ‘white, middle-class housewives’ in North America and Europe, it is far more widespread than that; for example, it was the basis of the ‘speak bitterness’ campaigns in China, out of which emerged challenges to foot binding and concubinage.

Consciousness-raising is experiential learning: through reflection on the personal experience of gender-based oppression, women can gain a deeper understanding of the experience of other forms of oppression based on class, race, ethnicity, culture and international relations. The process of consciousness-raising is an important tool in feminist organizing: making the link between one’s own experience and the experience of others based on other categories of exclusion can be a powerful analytical tool, a stimulus to action that benefits oneself and others. Indeed, it is precisely because women of every class, race, ethnic group and country can identify with

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