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)

Small family businesses have generally been shown to exhibit significant concern for social responsibility, especially at the community level. Despite the reported heterogeneity of family firms in their preferences for and participation in social responsibility, the drivers of such differences are not agreed upon in the literature. We draw from enlightened self-interest and social capital theories by exploring their complementary and competing implications for the effect of duration and community satisfaction on participation in community-oriented social responsibility. Additionally, drawing on the (...) association between gender and self-construal and evidence that gender shapes helping and giving behaviors, we assess the moderating role of the gender of the firm manager in these relationships. We test our hypotheses on a sample of 279 family businesses and find support that gender moderates the relationship between community duration and satisfaction and measures of CSR. (shrink)

Community organising is subject to several interpretations, and community practices have spread worldwide over the last three decades (Mizrahi 2016; Tattersall 2015). Community organising has diffe...

Philanthropy is typically hierarchically constructed with an imbalance of power between funders and grantees. While this seems inherent in philanthropic relationships where funders inevitably control resources that grantees need, some women’s funds have sought to construct less hierarchical and thus more feminist relationships with the organizations they support. Based on many years of insider access to a local women’s fund, this article describes and explains the organization’s efforts to develop interactive dialogues with its grantees, which led to a change in (...) grants guidelines that were more inclusive of women’s methods of community organizing. A small survey of women’s community groups, done as background to this research, provides data on challenges and obstacles these groups face when seeking monies to support their work. Some attention is given to implications for general theories of organizations, for funder-grantee dialogues leading to increased accountability in philanthropy, and for support of women’s community organizations. (shrink)

During the past two decades, opportunities for women's social movement organizations to expand their scope of engagement have often been accompanied by greater vulnerability to donor discipline and scrutiny. Efforts by activists to accommodate the demands for accountability and institutional sustainability by professionalizing their organizations have been instrumental in moving feminist concerns into the political mainstream. However, such institutionalization has frequently contributed to the persistence or creation of social hierarchies within and between women's organizations, as well as to shifts in (...) their social change agendas and action strategies. This article examines the common dilemmas of activists in Latin America and the United States, bringing together two usually separate domains of scholarship to analyze the course, costs, and possibilities of organizational transformation. (shrink)

Faith-based community organizing is receiving an increasing amount of attention from scholars of religious ethics. This essay is motivated by the worry that accounts of such organizing depend on a problematic embrace of multiculturalism, an embrace characteristic of our neoliberal era. Like the powers that they purport to challenge, organizing efforts often embrace difference only when it is carefully managed. This is being challenged by theological accounts of organizing that take the religious dimension of such efforts seriously, as well as (...) by feminist critiques of community organizing. This essay probes how race might be taken just as seriously by religious ethicists who study community organizing. Drawing on the civil rights movement's legacy of faith-based community mobilization as well as traditions of Black theological reflection, this essay challenges the easy embrace of multi-racial coalitions in faith-based organizing. (shrink)