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Study of women’s rights movements in Middle East and Asia from 19th century to 1980s, covering Egypt and Turkey, China, India, Indonesia, Korea and the Philippines. Argues feminism was not an alien ideology but indigenous to these countries.
Series of 22 posts covering numerous aspects of protests, their cause, and issues of policing.
This work organises Danilo Dolci’s scholarship on nonviolence and nonviolent action through a selection of his most significant experiences and works.
Sexual violence within minority ethnic communities is endemic in Aotearoa/New Zealand, but grossly underreported. This paper presents the results of two small-scale qualitative studies that explored why. In-depth interviews were undertaken with academics, specialist sexual violence practitioners and community/social workers. Two main factors that led to underreporting were first, internalised barriers as a result of a ‘white’ and ‘male’ gaze; and second, the cultural relativism of meanings of violence. The authors discovered that issues of stigma, defensiveness about traditional norms, especially concerning gender roles and the referencing of minority group identity were deterrents to disclosure and reporting. The paper also explored the implications of underreporting for women seeking help and for the collection of robust evidence of sexual violence among minority ethnic women. The paper concludes with recommendations for improved strategic efforts to encourage safe disclosure among women in minority ethnic communities who experience sexual violence.
This article focuses primarily on the Ugandan Women’s Parliamentary Association (UWOPA) as a key part of the wider women’s movement in Uganda. It considers how women members of parliament were able to give more prominence to women’s concerns in policy debates, but also how they were strengthened, when pressing for gender-sensitive laws and policies, by women’s collective backing. The findings also show that success in achieving laws such as Domestic Violence Act and Prohibition of Female Genital Mutilation was due to collaborating with male legislators, some of whom joined UWOPA.
A study of Costa Rica, which explores the relation between its demilitarized status and its safety, independence, and social wellbeing.
This comparative study of 16 countries documents women's political resistance during and since 2011, with essays by both activists and scholars. The book stresses the diversity of the social groups and attitudes of the women involved, and gives a voice to often marginalized groups such as housewives and rural women. After an introductory chapter 'Advancing Women's Rights in the Arab World', the book is divided into five parts: What They Fight For; What They Believe; How They Express Agency; How They Use Space to Mobilize; and How They Organize.
Covers environmental/peace/feminist protest in the USA, analysing key ideas and organising methods, as well as evolution of some major campaigns, for example against the Seabrook nuclear energy plant and the Livermore nuclear weapons laboratory.
Analysis of Estrada regime and the protests that led to his overthrow and replacement by Aroyo. The article is also a critique of western commentators who deplore the popular uprising, and an attack on a neoliberal conception of democracy. The author concludes that the 2001 rebellion was ultimately an elite controlled process, transferring power to a different faction of the elite, but also a model of popular mobilization and empowerment.
This article appeared on the day of the 2020 referendum on whether there should be a new constitution, and if so how it should be drawn up. Cruz explains that voters can choose between two kinds of convention, one based solely on members elected by voters (the option generally favoured by the left), and the other composed half of elected members and half of parliamentarians (many of whom did not want a new constitution). an option seen as favouring the right wing government of Sebastian Pinera. The article then looks back at Chilean politics since the fall of Pinochet.
Interviews with strikers who took part in protests and written from their viewpoint.
Resistance to the use of Puerto Rican island as a US Navy bombing and gunnery range. Recounts direct action by Puerto Ricans and development of transnational action, involving US Quakers, to build chapel on the island.
Analyses the US LGBT movement from 1945-2000 using the model of the Movement Action Plan developed by Moyer.
Primarily an account of the movement of conscientious objection and ‘insumision’ in Spain, but including analysis and proposals. It was written by university teachers who joined the movement and assisted from inside. Published in the final stage of the movement, when the end of conscription was announced. but there were still objectors jailed in military prisons.
It considers past, present and future prospects of female activism in China and how it is thriving despite the current political leadership in the country, predominantly patriarchal and directed at maintaining social stability, thus suppressing all forms of activism.
Account of three months struggle against Newbury bypass.
Femen was founded in the Ukraine in 2008 by four women to protest against patriarchy embodied in dictatorship, religion and the sex industry. Their well publicised bare-breasted protests have included a dangerous demonstration in Belarus and opposition to President Putin. They have moved to France and this book was first published in French. A film ‘Ukraine is not a Brothel’ claimed that Femen’s protests were orchestrated and the women controlled by a male svengali. This claim is addressed in an addendum to the English version of the book.
The story, narrated by his brother, of one of the most iconic figure of the anti-mafia struggle, Peppino Impastato, who revolted against the patriarchal structure of his family, went against his father who belonged to the Sicilian mafia organisation and ignited an anti-mafia culture and actions at the cost of his own life.
This chapter explores how to measure quantitatively women’s social movements. Drawing on previous qualitative and quantitative studies of politically influential social movements addressing women’s rights across developing countries, the authors examine what aspects of women’s collective action can create a meaningful variable. The chapter concludes with a call for new methods to measure women’s movements, to pinpoint the circumstances that lead to mobilization, the intricacies of women’s movements, and the ways women’s collective action leads to women’s political empowerment and gender equality, both in the developing world and a global context.
Examination of major protests and movements in the USA from the anti-Vietnam War mass obstruction of Washington DC in May 1971 to the Occupy movement of 2011. The author discusses the role of feminists and gay activists in launching significant resistance on key public issues: notably the 'Women's Pentagon Action' in 1980 and ACT-UP battling discrimination against AIDS sufferers in the 1980s. The book also examines why some major protests were not well supported by Black activists and how they brought a different focus to others.