Mainstream theory and research in the field of social movements and political sociology has, by and large, ignored the influence of gender on social protest. A growing body of feminist research demonstrates that gender is an explanatory factor in the emergence, nature, and outcomes of all social movements, even those that do not evoke the language of gender conflict or explicitly embrace gender change. This article draws from a case study of the postpartum depression self-help movement to outline the relationship (...) between gender and social movements. Linking theories of gender to mainstream theories on social movements allows us to recognize gender as a key explanatory factor in social movements and, in turn, to identify the role that social movements play in the social construction of gender. (shrink)

This article extends recent scholarship on masculinity by analyzing the effects of social structure, social relations, and gendered caregiving ideology on the care men give to kin and friends. To be sure, men spend significantly less time giving care than do women. However, much variation is contingent on the women in men's lives: It is primarily the characteristics of men's families more than employment or gendered caregiving ideology that shape the amount and kind of caregiving men provide. Our findings suggest (...) that although men's caregiving is variable and socially patterned, it is contingent on women: Wives and daughters pull men into caregiving, while adult sisters substitute for them. (shrink)

This article describes political discourse on domestic violence that obscures men's violence while placing the burden of responsibility on women. This perspective, which the author calls patriarchal resistance, challenges a feminist construction of the problem. Using a qualitative analysis of men's and political magazines, the author describes two main discursive strategies used in the resistance discourse: degendering the problem and gendering the blame. These strategies play a central role in resisting any attempts to situate social problems within a partiarchal framework. (...) It is argued that this is a political countermovement to the feminist constructions of domestic violence as opposed to a serious concern about women's violence and male victims. Three major implications this resistance discourse has are the normalization of intimate violence, the diversion of attention from men's responsibility and cultural and structural factors that foster violence, and the distortion of women's violence. (shrink)

This article focuses on the ways gendered experiences varied by race with regard to women's recruitment and participation in the civil rights movement of Mississippi. The author analyzes 13 interviews with both African American and white women who were connected to the movement. By privileging the voices of movement actors, this study begins to illuminate the ways recruitment and participation varied by race. Three types of women's participation are distinguished: high-risk activism, low-risk institutional, and activist mothering and “women's work.” Explanations (...) for these different forms of participation are found in examining two primary patterns of recruitment. (shrink)

This article examines the formation of consciousness among women at the beginning stages of the women's movement. The author analyzes the complexity of pathways to feminism across the political spectrum, comparing women who were active on the Left in Students for a Democratic Society with women active in the leading conservative organization of the 1960s, Young Americans for Freedom. She finds an unexpected division among women in both groups between those who identify discrimination by their male peers and those who (...) do not. The author argues there are three stages in the formation of feminist consciousness: identification of inequality or mistreatment, discovering a language or framing by which to interpret these experiences, and the social construction of a collective identity. Factors for each of these three stages that help or hinder the formation of feminist consciousness are discussed. (shrink)