continue to have armies, as I suspect we will for some time to come, then they, too, must be fully integrated, as well as our national guard, our state troopers, our local sheriffs' offices, our district attorneys' offices, our state prosecuting attorneys'  ...

Historical dynamics around feminism, race, and rape discouraged extensive early Black involvement in anti-rape work in the United States. In Los Angeles, concern among women of color in the movement and a state initiative to fund poorly served areas converged to produce two new Black rape crisis centers in the mid-1980s. Ironically, state funding, an otherwise conservative influence on the anti-rape movement, has facilitated the progressive goal of expanding racial and ethnic diversity in the Los Angeles anti-rape movement. Racially homogeneous (...) organizations contributed more to diversifying the movement than integration within organizations. Despite differences in political perspective, women from older feminist groups and the new community-oriented centers now successfully work in coalition. (shrink)

This article analyzes feminist organizations as a species of social movement organization. It identifies 10 dimensions for comparing feminist and nonfeminist organizations or for deriving types of feminist organizations and analyzing them. The dimensions are feminist ideology, feminist values, feminist goals, feminist outcomes, founding circumstances, structure, practice, members and membership, scope and scale, and external relations. I argue that many scholars judge feminist organizations against an ideal type that is largely unattainable and that excessive attention has been paid to the (...) issue of bureaucracy versus collectivism to the neglect of other organizational qualities. The varieties of ideology, form, and strategy that feminist organizations embody should be analyzed in relation to outcomes for women, the women's movement, and society. As has recently begun to occur, feminist scholars are encouraged to claim the topic of feminist organizations for themselves. (shrink)