Territorial politics has become a major concern for feminist scholars in the frame of the increasing salience of multilevel settings. It has often been argued that prominent territorial identities undermine the women’s movement since gender identities become less relevant. Scotland and Catalonia offer a great opportunity to test this hypothesis. Both regions have witnessed intense decision-making processes as regards the possibility to be an independent state. This paper explores comparatively the way in which their respective women’s movement reacted to this major event. It is argued that relevant contextual factors have led to different responses. In Scotland, the women’s movement experienced a remarkable boost and organized specifically to support the Yes and the No campaigns. Some key elements help to understand this: a gender gap in the referendum polls, which increased the interest in the women’s vote; the fact that how an (non)independent Scotland would look like was at the core of the political debates; and, that ethno-territorial identities were secondary when compared to the emphasis put on equality and welfare. In Catalonia, the women’s movement has not been so engaged or organizationally modified. These may well be the main reasons: the right to hold an independence referendum, which is denied by the Spanish executive, is being the main topic under discussion; the pro-referendum campaign is led by CiU, a right-wing party, that has tried to keep equality and welfare out of the debates; and the attempt to restrict reproductive rights by the central government gathered much attention from the Catalan women’s movement. These elements account thus for different reactions, and align this work with the so-called conditional approach, which is context-sensitive. Similarly, they reveal that territorial and gender identities are not necessarily at odds with each other as the literature has often suggested.
