Gender, social movements, and norms: where are the women in movements?

Hitherto, most research on women and social movements has mainly focused on feminists movements while it has overlooked the roles and experiences of women within those movements that don’t organize on the basis of gender. Bearing in mind that social movements provide a fundamental avenue for disadvantaged groups to improve their representation, it is fundamental to acknowledge that social movements are gendered. Several scholars have documented how inter-movement dynamics, framing process and tactics evoke particular meanings of gender regarding femininity and masculinity, and at the same time re(produce) gender power relations. Furthermore, gender intersects with other social axes, such as sexuality, gender identity, race and ability, which construct particular meanings in different social contexts and shape the political participation and representation of those at the intersection of multiple identities. Therefore, the article aims to unveil both the gendered aspects and the gendered representation claims put forward by social movements. Accordingly, I propose a comparative case study that builds on feminist institutionalism. Such an approach has been proven to be fruitful when studying the gendered dynamics of formal organizations, such as political parties, because it allows to identify those social norms about gender that shape women’s experiences and (re)produce power relations between women and men. Hence, I argue it is a useful approach to unveil those gendered norms that hinder the effective participation and representation of women within social movements. In particular, the empirical analysis compares the internal dynamics and representation claims put forward by the LGBT movement, the antiracist movement, and the disability rights movements in Catalonia. The analysis builds on interviews with women who participate in the abovementioned movements and on documents written by them. And the data is analyzed using interpretive process tracing with a grounded approach. Finally, this paper aims to contribute to social movement literature and feminist scholarship on gender within the context of social movements by offering a greater understanding on how different interlocking social axes of difference shape the participation and representation of women.