WUNC displays by the women's movement in the polarised Polish society

In recent years, Poland has seen a surge in citizen mobilisation and participation, as evidenced by the record voter turnout in October 2023 elections [Polish Electoral Commission, 2023], as well as mass political demonstrations, including the Million Hearts March in September 2023 [Marsz Miliona Serc, 2023]. One of the reasons for this is the polarisation within the society over party politics, as well as specific issues and modern challenges. Women’s rights, and especially abortion are among the polarising issues for the Polish society [Horonziak, 2022]. The current government declares intentions to liberalise the abortion law, but the prior, rightist and populist government dominated by the Law and Justice Party has introduced staunch restrictions in access to pregnancy termination procedures. The paper explores the process of mobilisation of Poles, especially Polish women after the court ruling in 2020 that further reduced women’s reproductive rights in Poland. The paper applies Charles Tilly’s concept of social movements [Tilly, Castaneda, Wood, 2020], focusing especially on displays of worthiness, unity, numbers and commitment. The analysis uses a database of materials published in Polish online portals and social media, selected by relevant keywords (e.g. women’s right). For the study, I selected materials published on five random dates during the wave of women’s protests at the turn of 2020 and 2021 (the samples included: 12,466 items, 3,991 items, 4,292 items, 1,925 items and 867 items respectively) to analyse them in the context of words and frames used to describe the WUNC displays and how they built the image of the social movements. I focused on such questions as showing support for the weak, poor and disabled (worthiness), presenting diversity of Polish women, all united within the pro-choice protests (unity), highlighting presence of protests in all parts of Poland, as well as both in and outside the biggest cities (numbers), and displaying willingness to accept repression and negative consequences (commitment). All those elements were applied to build the image of the movement which succeeded immensely in changing the Polish discourse on women’s rights and mobilising people to take part in the protests [Korolczyk et al., 2019], but failed to modify the health and human rights policies in the short term. However, it is believed that feminist mobilisation contributed to the electoral loss of the prior government [Jaworska-Surma, 2023] and may eventually lead to change of the anti-abortion law, too. References: Horonziak S., 2022, "Dysfunctional democracy and political polarisation: the case of Poland", Z Vgl Polit Wiss (2022) 16:265–289. Jaworska-Surma A., 2023, "Fenomen wyborczej mobilizacji. Przyczyny rekordowej frekwencji podczas wyborów parlamentarnych 2023 – wnioski z badan". Warszawa: Fundacja Batorego. Korolczuk E., Kowalska B., Snochowska-Gonzalez C., Ramme J. (2019). "Bunt kobiet : czarne protesty i strajki kobiet". Gdańsk: Europejskie Centrum Solidarności. Marsz Miliona Serc, 2023, https://marszmilionaserc.info/. Polish Electoral Commission, 2023, https://wybory.gov.pl/sejmsenat2023/pl/frekwencja/pl. Tilly C., Castaneda E., Wood L.J. (2020), "Social movements, 1768-2018". New York: Routledge.