(Page 1 of 32) - Feminist Social Movements: The Politics of Inclusion & Exclusion authored by Hebert, Laura.

Feminist Social Movements: The Politics of Inclusion & Exclusion

Laura Hebert, University of Denver

Paper Prepared for the 2005 International Studies Association Annual Convention

Introduction

The development trajectory of women’s movements, the issues prioritized, and their relationship
to the state and other social justice movements are context specific, shaped by the socio-political
and economic environment within which they are embedded. Nonetheless, women’s movements
globally share a common purpose: to achieve the transformation of societal institutions that
sanction unequal gender relations. Nowhere in the world, however, has this goal been achieved.
In spite of the long history of women’s scholarship and activism aimed at challenging the gender
hierarchy, masculinism

remains firmly entrenched. Overt discrimination against females is

discernible in every society throughout the world, as reflected in the persistence of cultural
values that assign men proprietary rights over women and girls; the unequal access of females to
employment, education, and training and the subsequent dependence of many women on men for
their economic welfare; the retention of laws that explicitly discriminate against women; and the
under representation of women in politics and positions of power (UNICEF, 2000: 7).

In this paper, based on a comparative analysis of the anti-gender violence movements that have
formed in Malaysia and South Africa, I explore why the goals of women’s movements often
remain out of reach. The embeddedness of masculinism and the challenge feminisms pose to the
endurance of masculinist privileges and power have certainly contributed to the denigration of
feminisms and feminists, thus undermining the ability of women’s movements to generate broad
based support for a “post-masculinist” world. However, I argue that in addition to looking
“externally,” it is crucial for women’s activists to look “internally” and reflect on how feminist-

Borrowing from Charlotte Hooper (2001), I use the term “masculism” to describe the

structure of gender inequality, rather than the more common term “patriarchy.” As described by
Hooper, feminists are increasingly reluctant to use the terminology of patriarchy given its
association with “universalizing, ahistorical theories and vague generalizations” (41).
“Patriarchy” also implies a direct relationship between male biology and male power, which
contradicts contemporary feminist attention to gender as socially constructed (and by
implication, as variable rather than fixed). The distinction Hooper makes between “men” and
“masculinity” and her understanding of men as gaining “access to power and privilege not by
virtue of their anatomy but through their cultural association with masculinity” has provided an
important framework for my research given my exploration of the potentiality of trans-gender
alliance formation (41).