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Premature Obituaries: How Can We Tell If the Women's Movement Is Over?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2010

Marian Sawer
Marian Sawer
Affiliation:
Australian National University
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Extract

Why have there been so many obituaries for the women's movement, written in so many different countries, despite so many continuing manifestations of life? We argue here that the problem is not simply the short attention span of the media and the constant quest for newness but also the terms in which social movements have been understood. This is partly a methodological question concerning how social movements are distinguished from other political actors, the repertoires that are expected of them, and the associated measurement of social movement activity through protest event databases. It is also a question of how “institutionalization” is understood. It has often been assumed that social movement activism is by definition extrainstitutional or that institutionalization is something that comes after, replaces, or usurps the role of social movements.

Type
Critical Perspectives on Gender and Politics
Information
Politics & Gender , Volume 6 , Issue 4 , December 2010 , pp. 602 - 609
Copyright
Copyright © The Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association 2010

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