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for this overly structural interpretation by arguing that mobilization occurs because of collective identity,
particularly in the face of no political openings (Melucci 1989). This has certainly been argued forcefully
in the case of the Southern Cone countries during the bureaucratic authoritarian military governments.
This perspective, however, has largely failed to recognize that while identities can be a unifying factor
they can also be quite divisive. Moreover, collective identities do not occur in isolation. Rather social
institutions, such as governments, shape and maintain existing social inequalities. Therefore, much of the
current (and mainstream) collective action theories cannot account for what happens when women and
men participate in a movement together because the theories do not sufficiently explain contradictory and
competing identities. Nor do the theories sufficiently account for how structures of domination affect a
group of individuals to collectively act and respond to existing structures.
The position I take in this paper is that all collective action, whether social movements, urban
popular movements, revolutions, or non-governmental organizations, is gendered. By gendered collective
action, I mean that gender becomes an organizing principal in the mobilization with respect to tactics,
strategies, and resources available. I contend that it is important to understand gendered collective action
because it illustrates that identity, while a unifying concept, is also at times a divisive one as I signaled
above. It also sheds light on how women’s roles within collective action take on a gendered connotation.
For example, gender was not the focus of the research of Velez-Ibanez in Rituals of Marginality
(1983). Rather, the focus of this research was primarily on one community’s attempt to gain legal
ownership of land. However, upon closer examination through a gender lens, it becomes clear that the
movement was imbued with gender. For example, without a gender lens it is the men that were the
leaders of the movement and visible to local political leaders. However, using a gender lens elucidates
the crucial role of women’s invisible work in that they were the ones at home to hide the men, warn of the
police, and to form a human barricade in front of the shantytown homes when the bulldozers arrived
(Velez-Ibanez 1983). Thus, this study also raises questions as to how scholars define leadership.
In other research, scholars explicitly recognize the importance of understanding movements
through a gender, race/ethnicity, and sexuality lens. For example, Irons (1998) demonstrates the largely
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