Introduction: feminist protests and politics in a world in crisis

Welcome to Gender & Development’s special double issue on Feminist Protests and Politics in a World in Crisis. This double issue was produced during a global pandemic that has triggered a deep economic crisis and an unprecedented public health emergency worldwide. When we were approached to co-edit this issue, we thought the focus on feminist protest and politics could not be more timely. The multiple and interconnected crises we are living through have adversely impacted women’s, trans and non-binary people’s rights, and gender equality gains made in policy, discourse and practice. We were keen to explore the rapidly evolving terrain of gender justice and feminist organising, and identify where the new energies within feminism were located, and what may be the ways forward for building a feminist future.

Our lives are overshadowed by a man-made climate crisis, and the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting millions and decimating livelihoods and economies. Violent conflicts have become more prolonged, and reflect an unequal global economic and political order that sustains proxy wars with sophisticated technology that allows warfare to be fought remotely, with limited casualties to aggressors. All the while, countries in the global North - which benefit from these military interventions and conflicts for natural resource extraction - are strengthening anti-immigration laws and heightening border control measures to keep refugees and migrants out. These laws are accompanied by extremist discourses that mobilise Islamophobia and different forms of religious fundamentalisms that rely on conservative interpretations of gender, race and class to define citizenship and belonging.

The issues that animate contemporary feminist and gender justice struggles are diverse. In the last decade, new challenges to feminist organising have emerged. These include the rise of conservative populist forces that have co-opted feminist agendas and brought together a diverse set of actors to dismantle gender equality gains. This rise is accompanied by democratic backsliding, and growth in authoritarianism, racism and xenophobia and austerity in many countries. These trends have led governments to increasingly limit freedom of speech and expression, association, and freedom of peaceful assembly. In limiting civil liberties, we observe political regimes re-writing the contours of political organising and citizen engagement, thus reshaping citizenship. Civic space, which is linked to written and unwritten rules that shape the ability of citizens to influence the socio-political and economic context in which they operate, is being curtailed. The impact on women human rights defenders, who face increasing risks, is a key feature of this environment (Chávez and Cruz 2021).

These developments have led feminists and gender justice activists to recalibrate their actions. The crisis of global capitalism - further deepened by the pandemic - has brought issues related to economic justice and the extractive nature of global economic systems of production to the forefront of feminist politics. The articles in this issue reveal that feminists and gender justice activists in the global South have a renewed focus on the structural nature of oppression, particularly the intersections of race, global capitalism, and patriarchy, around the world.

Protests have become the leading route through which feminist movements have organised against austerity, corruption and authoritarian regimes across Europe, the United States of America, Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Carnegie's global protest tracker shows that as of September 2021, 230 anti-government protests took place worldwide across 110 countries, with 78 per cent of authoritarian regimes being the centre of significant protests (Carnegie 2021). Accompanying these protests is the use of digital platforms that have aided intergenerational, transnational, cross-movement organising, by facilitating both online and offline mobilisation.

From the Movement for Black Lives, #MeToo and climate justice activism, we are also witnessing an exponential growth in transnational and intergenerational organising. Struggles for freedom and justice are being linked. Feminists and gender justice activists are responding to crises and their disruptive effects. They are seizing the opportunity to reimagine democracy, gender relations, power relations and humanity. Feminist organising ranges from issues such as the cost of living, violence against women, denial of abortion rights, LGBTQI rights, weakening democracy, environmental crises, immigration laws, police brutality and unpaid and invisible care work. We have observed feminist organising contribute to changes in autocratic governments such as in Sudan, toppling a corrupt and homophobic administration in Puerto Rico, and the ushering in of abortion rights in Catholic-majority countries such as Ireland and Argentina. However, these forms of dissent have also invited brutal repression in Belarus, Hong Kong, India, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe, to mention just a few examples.

As we examine the rapidly evolving terrain of gender justice and feminist organising, we note the contradictory ways in which they connect or not. We also recognise that there is an opportunity in this moment to understand how patriarchy intersects with white supremacy, capitalism, race, ethnicity, caste, and religious systems; and how effective and sustainable feminist action can be mounted against these challenges. This double issue examines various modes of organising, and lessons generated from feminist movement building and resistance across different parts of the world. In thinking through how to organise and do justice to the breadth of concerns and contexts covered in this issue, we opted to trace the central thematic questions that cut across the issue, and within that trace the forms of organising and questions arising.

Amidst the deepening of structures of oppression, new voices and actors have joined the struggle for gender justice, and have reformulated old ideas in feminist politics and reoriented action accordingly. Collectively, the articles in this issue cover a range of collective mobilisations for gender and social justice. The articles cover feminist struggles, women-led social movements that may not espouse explicit goals for gender equality; and women, queer and non-binary people participating in wider social justice movements. This renewed energy and call for action is not without tensions and anxieties. The locus of these anxieties and discomforts in feminist politics is linked to exclusions and silence particularly around race, sexuality, gender identity and generational lines. Many of the authors also point out that the deepening social and economic cleavages given the current economic and political crisis mean that gender justice activists face steep challenges in terms of building genuine solidarity, and intersectional and cross-sectoral alliances. Other concerns in feminist politics discussed here have a long history - they are around preserving autonomous modes of organising and the impact of official funding on activism. In this section, we show as a collective body of work, how the articles engage with the challenges, anxieties, and new developments in feminist politics.

Anti-gender backlash and democratic backsliding

Recent conceptual developments in feminist thought and practice on anti-gender backlash are explored in this issue through empirical case studies that analyse the strategies deployed by feminists in this hostile climate. Contemporary anti-gender backlash manifests itself in multiple forms at multiple levels. Its drivers, sources, and manifestations vary, and as a phenomenon it is strongly connected to democratic backsliding. The strategies used by backlash-actors vary, but a key feature in their tactics is the co-option of progressive discourse. Many of the articles in this issue examine the co-option of gender equality and feminist agendas in their particular contexts.

Both Tessa Lewin and Daria Colella explore how progressive feminist agendas and discourses are captured by right-wing political parties and/or by women’s groups politically or ideologically aligned with these parties to undermine gender equality. Both authors add to the growing body of literature on contemporary anti-gender counter movements (Goetz 2020; Corrêa et al. 2018; Grzebalska and Pető 2018) that operate in multiple locations and attempt to ‘insert new understandings of gender, sex, and sexuality into [international] policy’ (Corredor 2019, 619). In many countries, particularly in Latin America and Eastern Europe, conservative political forces (right-wing political parties and the Catholic Church) have selectively used issues related to (progressive) discourse on gender and sexuality (which these forces term ‘gender ideology’) to bring together a diverse set of actors to gain political power and vilify specific groups of people - particularly those belonging to gender, sexuality, ethnic and racial minority communities. In these instances, the instrumental use of the feminist agenda has acted a ‘symbolic glue’ (Kováts and Põim 2015) to bring about a larger political shift. Using the idea of ‘symbolic glue’ in this issue, Daria Colella turns the spotlight on Italy, and examines how nationalist forces co-opt feminist agendas. She unpacks ‘femonationalism’ in Italy by examining how right-wing political parties systematically frame campaign materials and deploy media strategies to paint Black and people of colour, especially those from Muslim background, as perpetrators of violence against women, and as belonging to an inferior culture that devalues women’s rights, thus posing a danger both to white Italian women and the immigrant women who belong to this culture.

Tessa Lewin’s contribution to contemporary anti-gender and anti-queer backlash literature is conceptual. She introduces the concept ‘discourse capture’, defining it as ‘when progressive discourse is co-opted and manipulated to serve right wing agendas’ (this issue, 253). Tessa Lewin explores how in the US the pro-life movement changed their framing of the abortion issue from one that positions foetal rights against maternal rights, to that of the bond between the woman and the ‘child’, to undermine the claim of the pro-choice movement that the ‘foetus’ is not a child. In a similar vein, in 2018, the ‘Vote No’ campaign appealed to the Irish public to ‘love both’ - meaning both the mother and the ‘unborn child’. Tessa Lewin illustrates that in other instances of discourse capture by conservative forces the focus has been on appropriating the symbols of progressive movements. She explores how in Argentina, the pro-life counter movement ‘la Ola Celeste’ or ‘Blue Wave’ introduced the use of a light blue scarf to represent their movement, and to counter the transnational pro-choice movement the Green Wave, which used green scarfs as a symbol. The movement, referred to as the Green Wave is also covered in the article by Gabriela Artazo, Agustina Ramia and Sofia Menoyo article (this issue). Tessa Lewin also draws attention to Uganda, where the lead organisation of the campaign for passing the Anti-Homosexuality Bill named itself as ‘the Interfaith Rainbow Coalition against Homosexuality’, which is a clear appropriation of the LGBTQI movement’s rainbow symbolism. Tessa Lewin illustrates, through collating examples from around the world, that four forms of discourse capture exist in practice – these are re-signifying, shifting, mimicking, and twisting. This typology is of immense value for analysing how the dismantling of progressive agendas by conservative forces takes place.

Several of the articles in this issue also link the anti-gender equality backlash to parallel phenomena witnessed in many countries: democratic backsliding through state-led reversal of progressive policies (including gender equality policies), the dismantling of key institutions that are tasked with promoting gender equality and protecting rights, and hypermasculine leaders gaining political office (Bermeo 2016; Waldner and Lust 2018). Often, democratic backsliding is accompanied by the rise of authoritarian tendencies through enactment of restrictive controls over the media, changes in registration and funding laws for civil society organisations, and the placing of limits on dissenters through the use of coercion, lawsuits, and the incarceration of activists. These phenomena are traced in Deepta Chopra’s article in this issue, which documents how officials in the current Modi government in India used the court, the police force and the media to harass protestors - including the allies and supporters of the Shaheen Bagh sit-in protests - against India’s discriminatory citizenship laws. Similarly, in their article, Bruna Pereira and Macarena Aguilar examine Brazil’s democratic backsliding and Black feminist activism against the roll back of racial and gender equality and progressive social policies in the country. They detail the killing of Marielle Franco, a Black, queer Rio de Janeiro activist and councilwoman, how progressive economic and social policies were reversed that disproportionately impacted poor minority women, and how institutions created to protect women’s rights - such as the human rights, racial equality and women’s ministry - were dismantled. The convergence of these regressive political shifts present difficulties for feminist and gender justice activists in these contexts - although these changes have led to renewed calls for action within the feminist movement and have brought progressive forces together.

Colonial legacies and structures of oppression

The inequalities that arise from the intersections of global capitalism, race and class are alive and well in the contemporary world, and these have deepened in this century. A focus on structures of oppression and the need to create a new world order - where women’s emancipation goes hand in hand with the economic justice that animated Socialist, Third World and post-colonial feminisms - has taken on a new sense of urgency in contemporary feminist struggles. Several of the articles in this issue show how claims for gender justice have reoriented themselves in order to challenge the co-option of the feminist agenda for economic justice by neoliberal forces, where the vision for emancipation of women is through assimilation in the global capitalist economy (Fraser 2009). Underpinning feminists’ understanding of the conceptual and practical work undertaken to challenge these systems is the concept of intersectionality. Kimberlé Crenshaw’s (1991) conceptualisation focuses our attention on the structural and political elements of intersectionality. In relation to the structural reading of intersectionality, articles in this issue pay attention to how race, gender and class produce differentiated experiences for racialised ‘others’. The question of ‘differentiated solidarities’ (Jones and Jónasdóttir 1988) across feminist, women-led and cross-movement groups emerges as a key concern, particularly around transnational organising.

In their article, Juliet Gudhlanga and Sam Spiegel examine diamond mines in Zimbabwe as sites of ‘supernormal profits’ and ‘supernormal patriarchy’ (Bradshaw et al. 2017). The extractive sector in Zimbabwe, like other parts of Africa, has come under sharp scrutiny for the impact that mining activities have had on local communities - from displacement, limited reinvestment in local communities, and broader labour conditions (Murombo 2021). Juliet Gudhlanga and Sam Spiegel highlight the gendered impact of this extractive economy, which affects women in diverse ways, including assault by soldiers, sexual exploitation, and an increased unpaid care burden as they collect water and fuel in an ever-more polluted environment to name but a few. The push for the government to adopt the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative to help promote transparency and curb corruption in the mining industry has become urgent amidst lack of information on dividends paid to local authorities and the government by mining companies.

Similarly, in her article, Julia Hartviksen provides an ethnographic account of the impact of palm oil plantations on Maya Q’eqchi communities in Guatemala, highlighting how women in these communities connect the struggles for land and territory to ending structural violence against women. The women use the concept cuerpo-territorio (body-territory) to highlight the existence of ‘multiple forms of historical, colonial and contemporary gendered, racialised and classed violences’ (this issue, page number to be added when issue made up). The author engages with communitarian feminist Lorena Cabnal’s definition of violence and shows how women leaders from Maya Q’eqchi communities elaborate on the disruption palm oil production has had on intrahousehold and community relations. The Maya Q’eqchi women interviewed argue that these shifts link to ‘exacerbation of existing gendered inequalities and structural violence’ (this issue, 298) that include economic dependence and precarious working conditions, and an adverse environmental impact on the community.

Several other articles in this issue explore the intersections of race, class, and sexuality, and how these intersections are linked to historical legacies created by colonial laws. These structures have shaped the current relationship that ethnic and racial minority women, queer groups and immigrants have with the state. Daria Colella shows how the current racialised and sexualised nature of anti-immigrant backlash deployed by far-right groups in Italy uses gender equality (i.e. women’s equality ‘in danger’) instrumentally, to justify their anti-immigrant claims. These claims have strong links to the colonial civilisational discourses on race and gender that underpin the view that Black and other ethnic groups are inferior compared to white Europeans (McClintock 1994).

In their article, madeleine kennedy-macfoy, Tamara Gausi and Chidi King explore the experiences of Black women trade unionists through repeated interviews, to show how intersections of gender, race, class, and migration status make Black women workers vulnerable to specific forms of exploitation and harm in capitalist systems sustained by racial and patriarchal inequities. An important feature of this article is the role played by Black women’s leadership in trade union structures that tend to be dominated by men, across contexts. Black women’s leadership both disrupts the dominant understanding of what union leadership looks like, and surfaces the intersectional questions that racialised women encounter as a core part of the union’s agenda. These explorations are in line with existing literature that highlights countless examples throughout history of women leading and winning the fight for better working conditions for all workers. Such explorations take on a new sense of urgency as we enter an era of austerity, and face global economic challenges brought on by the pandemic that may lead to further erosion of worker’s rights, and that may have significant, gendered impacts. For example, as female-dominated, service-oriented sectors experience job losses, women are pushed into precarious employment, while public services that support women are cut (Kabeer et al. 2021).

Digital activism

We observe how digital media reveals the rapid and profound changes to how people communicate and act collectively. The spatial boundaries of public discussions are blurred, and so it is increasingly important to consider the digital as part of the current social and political order, rather than as separate from them (Srinivasan et al. 2019). Across the different countries explored in this issue, civic participation has been characterised by a high level of youth activism channelled into old and new spaces, such as political parties, formal civil society organisations, social movements, and activism on the streets, utilising innovative actions to raise their demands. Transnational digital mobilisation and organising occurs despite government efforts to limit the democratic spaces created by these avenues (Buyse 2018). In this issue, articles from different parts of the world explore the role of social media in mediating feminist activism and sustaining feminist movements’ demands for social change.

Juliet Gudhlanga and Sam Spiegel examine how in mining communities in Zimbabwe, feminist activists used social media for information sharing and building solidarity and mutual support for navigating structural violence. The authors show how activists focus on women’s lived experiences in mining communities to illustrate the way global capitalism is connected to the exploitation of women. In the face of increased state surveillance and online violence targeted at women, online community-building has facilitated gender-focused critiques of mining megaprojects and state violence. WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter and blogs not only facilitate information sharing, but also serve as sites for resource mobilisation for income generating activities and business development.

Similarly, creating an on-line presence to claim space and a community of support were key features through which the queer community participated in the #EndSARS campaign in Nigeria that pushed for the dissolution of the special anti-robbery squad (SARS), notorious for its use of force and extra-judicial approaches (see Onyeka Nwabunnia’s article in this issue, discussed in the next section). In similar vein, Martin Atela, Ayobami Ojebode, Racheal Makokha, Marion Otieno and Tade Aina explore the use of social media as a key strategy deployed by the Bring Back Our Girls (#BBOG) movement to sustain pressure on the state, and retain a transnational focus on the campaign to bring back the kidnapped Chibok girls (see this Introduction’s section on coalition building for discussion). Several articles also document the harassment that feminist and queer activists face because of their online presence, and how state surveillance of online spaces has increased over time (Hadeel Qazzaz, this issue; Ayesha Khan, Asiya Jawad and Komal Qidwai; this issue; Bruna Pereira and Macarena Aguilar; this issue). Hadeel Qazzaz’s article highlights how online activism exposes feminist activists in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region to threats and harassment: ‘“There isn’t a single time that feminist content is posted [online], without [those who posted it] facing bullying afterwards” … [M]embers received personal threats and threats to their loved ones, both online and offline’ (this issue, 436). Collectively, these articles reveal that despite state control over dissent, feminists and gender justice actors have creatively turned to social media to highlight their public presence, exchange information, build cross movement support, and sustain pressure on the state.

New energies in feminist and gender justice struggles

Bodies and cultural spaces have re-emerged as sites of struggle, with performative strategies taking a prominent position. In her article, Deepta Chopra provides a detailed account of the strategies deployed by first-time Muslim women activists in Shaheen Bagh, Delhi, India. Affectionately dubbed by the wider public as the dadis (grandmothers) of Shaheen Bagh, they led the four-month-long sit-in protest against the police violence inflicted on student activists and the impact of India’s discriminatory citizenship laws on the Muslim minority. The movement’s inclusive claim to citizenship, and their innovative strategies to transform the physical space (Shaheen Bagh) through performance - art, poetry, songs - led to intergenerational exchange, and drew wide support. It also created cross-sectional solidarity, attracting a diverse section of the public beyond Muslims. In this article, we see a common approach to contemporary movements, which include distributed leadership, pushing back against politicisation of social movements to sustain autonomy, focusing on secularity as a means to draw communities together across religious and other group divides, and finally, centring care as a key element of sustaining public protests.

In a similar fashion, Onyeka Antoinette Nwabunnia focuses on the #EndSARS movement against police brutality in Nigeria. Onyeka Nwabunnia mines social media data around the #EndSARS campaign, and explores the momentum that the #EndSARS protests created across Nigeria around the socio-economic and political dynamics that lead to the existence of units such as SARS, which operate outside the law, and disproportionately target young people (Okechukwu 2020). Against this background, Onyeka Nwabunnia explores how queer organisers used this moment as an opportunity to build cross movement solidarity in a highly heteronormative and conservative country. The articulation of queer experiences demands - and visibility within the movement to #EndSARS relied on - creating systems of mutual care that sustained the participation of queer protesters online and offline. This article engages with the tensions that arise within broader political movements where political homophobia and feminist solidarity collide to produce complex political outcomes for communities who seize the moment as a chance for transformative national conversations. Onyeka Nwabunnia argues that queer activists made visible the connection between queer identity and police brutality and state sanctioned violence by calling out homophobia, generating discussion, and claiming public places through a street activism that relied heavily on activists openly presenting their identities.

The use of cultural and virtual space and street activism also features prominently as sites of resistance in Bruna Pereira and Macarena Aguilar’s article on contemporary backlash against Black and racial minority women in Brazil. In Brazil, the country with the largest Black population outside Africa, Bruna Pereira and Macarena Aguilar explore Black women’s resistance in the face of an increasingly hostile political environment. The authors, drawing on in-depth interviews with eight Black Brazilian activists, identify the major tactics deployed to resist the impact of President Jair Bolsonaro’s political regime. Specifically, they point to the attendant backlash against political programmes for equity and justice developed by the previous Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff regimes. By analysing the Observatório de Favelas [Favelas Observatory], Odara Instituto da Mulher Negra [Odara - Black Woman Institute], Escola Feminista Abya Yala [Abya Yala Feminist School], Mulheres Negras Decidem [Black Women Decide], Instituto Alziras [Alziras Institute], Mulheres Negras Sim [Yes to Black Women], Criola and Festival Latinidades [Latinidades Festival], the authors illuminate the value of a combination of tactics to drive change. They include, but are not limited to, public protests, grassroots organising, solidarity, the pursuit of formal political office, the creation of counter narratives to influence public debate, and cultural musical production grounded in afro-diasporic traditions.

A few of the articles in this issue also explore where new energies lie in contemporary feminist struggles for forging South-South transnational solidarities. Ana López Ricoy unpacks how across Latin America a new kind of symbolic South-South transnationalism is growing, and is distinctively different from the institutionalised, policy-oriented transnationalism analysed by previous scholars (Armstrong and Bernstein 2008). She traces the spread of the performance piece, ‘A Rapist in Your Path’, in Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Peru, and Bolivia. In these public performances, protestors use lyrics inspired by Rita Segato and simple choreography to face a hypothetical authority, repeatedly chanting ‘the rapist is you’, thereby highlighting the state's failure to protect women. The ‘Rapist in Your Path’ performances draw on legacies of previous mobilisations, like the five-year mass marches in Argentina, and South-South transnational activism in Latin America under the banner #NiUnaMenos (#NotOneLess) protesting femicide, gender-based violence, and the illegality of abortion. The influence of previous protests also draws attention to the cyclical nature of feminist learning that takes place around protest repertoires, the framing of claims, and strategies of engagement in ‘contentious politics’ (Tilly and Tarrow 2015).

As stated earlier, in current feminist and gender justice struggles, bodies have emerged as the prime site where new energies have converged. The kinds of struggles documented in this issue reject the social purposes assigned to particular bodies (as demonstrated in calls for reproductive rights) and regulation by state and social authorities of how bodies should appear in public (in relation to queer and trans bodies, and female sexuality); against exclusion of bodies from citizenship, or bodies experiencing assault perpetrated by the police, army and extremist groups (such as gender-based violence, the kidnapping of the Chibok school girls, sexual violence in conflict zones and on plantations); and against bodies bearing the brunt of economic exploitation (eg. women affected by mining, and women workers in particular types of precarious and vulnerable employment). Articles in this issue also feature ways in which protestors and activists have used their bodies to perform ‘gender’ and acts of assembly (Butler 2015). Many of the acts of protest described here are of bodies coming together and laying claim to both the public and the political space. These claims on the body are made through performances such as ‘A Rapist in your Path’, described by Ana López Ricoy (this issue), through public sits-in by grandmothers in India, which blocked a major highway for four months (Deepta Chopra’s article in this issue), or by collective acts placing the body on display through hunger-strikes and refusal to bury the dead, as undertaken by the Hazara women (ethnic minority) protestors in Pakistan (Jalila Haider and Miguel Loureiro, this issue).

Through these acts of assembly, women and gender justice activists also draw attention to the specific gender roles that are assigned to their bodies - for example, the role of carers to the grandmothers of Shaheen Bagh (Deepta Chopra, this issue); the relational role (as mothers and wives) of Hazara women to the men in their community who are being killed (Jalila Haider and Miguel Loureiro, this issue); or the vulnerability of their bodies in public to the queer activists in the #EndSARS movement (Onyeka Nwabunnia, this issue). Bodies are also the main instrument for activists to claim cultural and virtual spaces as bodies feature prominently in posters, photography, and posts uploaded on websites. The centrality of bodies in these struggles draws attention to established feminist understanding that our political selves and politics remain relational, and for those at the periphery the first act in claiming rights is to conjure the issue into being. And the act of conjuring is through performance (verbal, nonverbal, collective).

Intergenerational debates

Invariably, what also emerges in several of the articles are the tensions that exist along generational lines, and the differences in modes of organising deployed by younger and older activists. In her article, Manjima Bhattacharjya argues that much of the tension within the Indian feminist movement ‘relates to the modes of engagement used by newer generations of online activists, rather than political differences’ (this issue, 629). The younger activists use fluid forms of online organising, including tactics (such as cancel culture, open naming and shaming) that are distinctively different from the older, more institutionalised forms of feminist organising. The younger activists can act without having to raise funds. She argues that this fluid form of organising gives the younger activists a large virtual presence, and make them less reliant on the organisations built by the older generation, but the activism itself remains more ephemeral and vulnerable.

The generational divides in many of the other countries covered in the articles are fractious, particularly in relation to expressions of sexuality, the reformulation of notions of culture, and questioning of gender binary identities. Hadeel Qazzaz’s article is an interview with Hayat Mirshad, a younger feminist, and focuses on the trajectory of the Lebanese feminist movement and activism by different generations. While there is much common ground between the two activists around gender-based violence and biased family law, Hadeel Qazzaz notes that the key difference between the generations is ‘the scale and depth of feminists owning the narrative and shaping how it is told’ (this issue, 436). Hayat, in the interview, points out that many younger feminists operate independently or have left established women’s rights organisations because the space for dissenting views, particularly on sexuality and LGBTQI rights, was absent. For the younger Lebanese feminists, intersectionality remains a key concern. A rallying cry for the younger activists has come from Khawla Bouaziz, a co-founder of the Mawjoudeen for LGBTQ! movement in Tunisia, where she urges feminists to take ‘lessons on how to become allies’ (this issue, 441). Hadeel Qazzaz argues for creating ‘differentiated solidarity’ between the generations on sexuality, and acknowledges that it will be a difficult process as many of the established organisations are still unwilling to engage on these issues, and risk repression from state authorities. Onyeka Nwabunnia’s article on queer activism in Nigeria also identifies cleavages that exist between older, mainstream feminist activists and queer communities, and how solidarities between these groups were created (see the previous section, on new energies).

While building intergenerational solidarity is challenging, some movements discussed in these articles have managed to attain this. Deepta Chopra’s article details how distribution of ‘unpaid care work’ (cooking, childcare) was a central strategy of Shaheen Bagh activists, allowing both younger women and older women to share the burden of domestic chores, and ensuring both groups could participate. The Shaheen Bagh resident activists and their allies also collectively took responsibility for cleaning the area, ensuring food supply etc., to ensure that everyone at the square was cared for - this brought the younger university students and older residents of Shaheen Bagh together. In their article, Gabriela Artazo, Agustina Ramia and Sofia Menoyo highlight the ways in which Argentinian Green Wave activists used the notion of care to build solidarity between activists across generational and cross-sectional lines. The activists defined care as: ‘[t]aking care of each other, in community, is this, fighting for our rights, and once we achieve those rights, protecting them … ’ (this issue, 347). Gabriela Artazo, Agustina Ramia and Sofia Menoyo focus on how young activists of the Green Wave movement actively built on ‘intergenerational dialogue that facilitates the learning and transmission of key concepts, as well as the construction of debates within the movement’ (this issue, 342). Although the process was full of tensions, active engagement with feminist legacies helped to identify points of reference for both generations, and challenge ‘adultcentrism’ (the belief that adult perspectives are intrinsically better), safely. It also facilitated the creation of a new language for mobilisation.

Coalition building and discomforts

Invariably, feminist struggles and gender justice struggles are animated by debates over what kinds of strategies work to create effective coalitions and broad alliances to bring about change. Questions inevitably arise over how to deal with discomforts and ambivalence between members of the struggle. How activists frame demands, use social connections and relationships strategically to sustain pressure on the state, and engage with the media to transmit their demands, is critical for garnering allies and public support (Tilly and Tarrow 2015).

In her article in this issue, Manjima Bhattacharjya traces the history of seven National Conferences on Autonomous Women’s Movements in India as learning spaces for the Indian feminist movement, and reveals the deep cleavages that exist within the movement along class, caste, sexuality, and urban-rural lines. She also explores how organisers of the conference tried to facilitate a process that would help overcome these divisions. Using archival materials, Manjima Bhattacharjya aptly analyses how earlier National Conferences privileged certain positions within Indian feminism that were linked to upper or middle class, upper-caste, urban-based, educated feminists. Her analysis also shows that while the younger feminists felt greatly attached to these conferences - where their feminist journeys started - they were not always provided equal space in leadership and management of the conferences. Manjima Bhattacharjya analyses how the open process for dialogues around contentious issues, the use of collective performances to facilitate bonding between groups, and the practice of ‘collective endorsement of co-written “resolutions” with purposefully diverse grassroots constituencies’ (this issue, 623) resolved some of the tensions within the movement.

In their article, Martin Atela, Ayobami Ojebode, Racheal Makokha, Marion Otieno and Tade Aina examine the strategies used by the Bring Back Our Girls Movement, or #BBOG, in Nigeria. #BringBackOurGirls (#BBOG), is a women-led movement emerging from the 2014 abduction of 276 girls from Chibok in North-eastern Nigeria by the militant Islamist group, Boko Haram. The authors examine the longevity of social movements that emerge out of a single issue, and the evolution of long-term programmes that are interlinked to the socio-economic and political questions that generate insurgent groups such as Boko Haram and gendered tactics of warfare such as the abduction of girls. In doing so, the authors also examine the role of social media in generating a transnational focus and interest in the campaign, and the longevity that a social media campaign enables. The political choices that the movement has made around resourcing and distributed leadership were informed by a desire to retain political autonomy. The authors detail how the movement created strategic alliances with the media and international actors to create sustained pressure on the state, and remain visible.

Ayesha Khan, Asiya Jawed and Komal Qidwai, in their article, analyse five episodes of ‘contentious politics’ (Tilly and Tarrow 2015) which were either led by women and/or were linked to gender equality concerns in Pakistan. They focus on the struggle by the Lady Health Workers (who provide community healthcare) for decent work conditions; the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM), an ethnic-based-youth-led movement in the conflict-affected Khybar Paktunkhwa (KP) region demanding state accountability; the Hazara (an ethnic minority group in Balochistan province) women’s protests against state violence; the Aurat March (Women’s March) initiative organised by young feminists across Pakistan to protest misogyny in all forms; and protests against sexual violence in Punjab province. Their analysis reveals that the leaders of these different movements act in solidarity to support each other’s movements, and have strategic connections with key actors in formal politics or the media. However, the authors also point out that while making ‘gendered claims representing intersectional issues help to foster alliances … these are not seamless’ (this issue, 400); there were many discomforts around tactics, framing and strategies. Underpinning these case studies is the issue - one of the authors’ five ‘contentions’ - of state failure. The inability of the political elite in government to address concerns that sit at the intersection of gendered power relations. The authors examine how fragility and conflict shape the space for women’s social and political action. In doing so, the authors examine the factors that drive women’s collective action, the attendant leadership strategies, and what this reveals about the outcomes pursued. Protests clearly function as one of many strategies to maximise women’s voice, alongside what may be considered conventional approaches such as policy advocacy, strategic litigation, and the pursuit of formal political office, such as court petitions, engagement with formal politics, and alliances with feminist leaders.

Pragyna Mahpara, in her article on the Bangladeshi anti-domestic violence coalition, Gabriela Artazo, Agustina Ramia and Sofia Menoyo on the abortion law reform in Argentina, and Deepta Chopra on the Shaheen Bagh protests, show that activists use different frames to make claims. The activists justify their grievances through ‘injustice framing’ (adverse impact on a group) or establish legitimacy of their claim by linking these to equality and access to social good (in the case of abortion, lack of public provision and illegality means poor women being adversely affected), or make emotional appeals by linking their claims to the ideals of a just society and/or nationhood (Benford and Snow 2000). What these articles illuminate is an issue feminists have had to grapple with in coalitional politics - that framing is a contentious act, which creates discomfort within the ‘in-group’. They also show that coalitional politics includes dealing with ambivalence and discomfort. In fact, the existence of discomforts and ambivalence are elements of truly inclusionary feminist politics (Reagon 1983).

Funding for feminist organising and gender equality

How to protect the space for autonomous organising, the adverse impact of NGOisation¹ for feminist movements, and how official funding shapes feminist organising continues to animate contemporary feminist politics. More recently, this conversation has been developed through research initiated by feminist funds and movement-support organisations on the state of resourcing for women’s rights. The Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID)’s pioneering 2011 report, Where is the Money for Women's Rights (Pittman et al. 2012), and more recently, Towards a Feminist Funding Ecosystem (Miller and Jones 2019) point to the limited resourcing for gender equality in comparison to resources allocated for broader social change concerns. These reports also point to the fact that funding for women’s rights predominantly comes from private funders and takes place in an environment where there is a proliferation of funding for project-related rather than long term programme funding. In effect, the recent global commitments to funding feminist movements made at the UN’s Generations Equality meetings, should be viewed as a direct result of the advocacy by feminist funds to shift the power in the funding sector (see Staszewska et al. 2020). Funding as a political tool and a practical resource for organising, and its relevance to the sustainability of movement work, is explored in two articles in this issue.

Susana Araujo draws our attention to formal negotiation processes between donor and recipient countries that may inadvertently exclude concerns around gender equality as priority aid areas. She argues that these negotiation processes should be a key area of concern for feminist politics. Susana Araujo examines the negotiation process of the Peruvian-Spanish Strategic Framework 2013–2016 as a case study. The negotiation process was based on the aid effectiveness principles for improving the impact of Official Development Assistance (ODA) set out in the Paris Accord of 2005. Susana Araujo, as an insider to the process, shows that the formal rules and principles set by the Accord for conducting bilateral negotiations led to the development of exclusionary, informal mechanisms. In the Peruvian case, women’s rights organisations were excluded from the formal negotiation processes and gender equality priorities almost disappeared from the bilateral aid agenda. It is well established that the aid effectiveness agenda may be hampering the prioritisation of gender equality in bilateral cooperation agreements (Gaynor 2007). Susana Araujo argues that urgent action is needed in this area, particularly in the COVID-19 context, ‘not only because donor countries have reduced ODA flows because of economic crises, but also because there are drastic changes in priorities for recipient and donor countries’ (this issue, 596).

The advocacy by feminist funds and feminist movement-support organisations proposes a shift in the ecosystem that will centre feminist movements and cross-movement support, and will invest in agile long-term funding. In their article in this issue, Lina Abou-Habib, Mozn Hassan and Carla Akil point out that conventional donors seem unable or unwilling to recognise the existence and values of new, intersectional feminist organizations, and thus support them to access available funding opportunities. They argue that this blindness on the part of mainstream funders is due to the clear dominance of external narratives about the gender and social realities of the region. The authors examine the creation of Doria, a feminist fund, named after Doria Shafik, a revolutionary Egyptian feminist, and how the process of setting up the fund led to the questioning of the historical silencing of specific local groups (such as queer feminist groups) and issues, and how alternative funding sources can support generation of knowledge on these selective silences. The creation of the regional Doria Feminist Fund amplifies the voices of feminists from and in the MENA region, using funding as a political resource to sustain organising.

Executives, femocrats and movement leaders

This special issue also seeks to examine women in power, including those in contexts where the states or political parties are adopting gender-just progressive language and agendas - however genuine, or however instrumental, those may be - and their implications for feminist organising. The articles in this issue examine the role of women leaders in the executive, legislatures, and as high-level-public-servants (femocrats) in promoting a gender equality policy agenda. They also explore the how informal relationships between these leaders and women’s rights groups and feminist coalitions influence policy decisions.

Against an overwhelming presence of male leaders in formal political systems, recent decades have seen a substantial increase in the number of women in legislative assemblies and in bureaucracies around the world (United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and University of Pittsburgh 2017), although in many contexts reaching gender parity in politics remains a distant goal. As the number of women leaders increase, the debates over whether women have a distinctive style of leadership and policy preference have intensified in public discourse. Are women purposefully elected to represent women’s interest? Is this the fundamental reason for increasing women’s representation in politics? Is it useful to assume that all women in parliament are interested in pursuing a radical transformative agenda? How do we make sense of the co-option and subversion of affirmative action policies by political parties and political elites to reward proxies? The answer remains inconclusive, yet studies show women representatives do exercise voice to raise issues with respect to social welfare, violence against women, and livelihood issues (Chattopadhyay and Duflo 2004; Escobar-Lemmon and Taylor-Robinson 2014). Examining the conditions under which women leaders can exercise influence in politics and policy making has gained new urgency as gender equality gains are rolled back by many right-wing populist governments and the adverse public health and economic impact of the pandemic on women deepens.

Critical actors and informal networks

In their article in this issue, Jennifer Piscopo and Malliga Och take on the thorny question–are women leaders more successful compared to male leaders in dealing with the health and economic crises triggered by the pandemic? The success of New Zealand, Taiwan, Germany, Finland, Denmark in containing COVID-19 was attributed to their female heads of government (Henley 2020). The authors move beyond the essentialist explanation that these leaders were successful because women tend to be caring and risk averse. Jennifer Piscopo and Malliga Och focus on women leaders at the subnational level– governors, mayors and local elected officials in six countries, where hypermasculine chief executives have created an adverse policy environment. They found that women leaders were consistent in prioritising clear public health communication and taking swift measures to contain the spread of the virus. The women leaders also implemented policies that prioritised the needs of vulnerable community members, especially women and racial and ethnic minorities. Jennifer Piscopo and Malliga Och argue this form of pandemic response is consistent with feminist approach to policymaking as they seek to ‘prioritise wellbeing and ameliorate and transform the structural inequalities that give rise to injustice in the first place’ (this issue, 549). While further research is needed into what enabled these women leaders at the subnational level to take these measures under hostile conditions, the value of Jennifer Piscopo and Malliga Och’s work is in developing an empirical picture of less studied areas in gender and politics–that of women in the executive at the subnational level. Given that globally women only comprise 24 per cent of the national task forces on COVID-19 (UN Women 2021), this article allows us to envision other avenues through which women’s needs can be addressed during the pandemic.

In her article, Ramona Vijeyarasa also focuses on women in executive positions, but at the national level in Southeast Asia. She contributes to a growing body of literature on female presidents and their relationship with women’s movements, and how this influences policy making. The article has empirical value as female presidencies are under-researched in this region. Using four case studies of national law reform during the presidencies of Corazon Aquino (1986–1992) and Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (2001–2010) in the Philippines, and Megawati Sukarnoputri (2001–2004) in Indonesia, Ramona Vijeyarasa shows that how and when women executives promote gender equality reforms is mediated by various factors. The female vote, the support female presidents receive from high level female officials and female members of parliament in navigating governmental politics in spaces that are closed off to the activists, and the political costs of adopting change–all influence their decisions. The relationship between female presidents and successful gender equality policy reform is not linear. However, women’s movements do benefit from having a woman leader in the executive who is interested in gender equality reforms, as these connections open formal political spaces that were previously unreachable.

In a similar vein, in her article, Pragyna Mahpara uses the case of the Domestic Violence (Prevention and Protection) Act 2010 of Bangladesh to examine under what circumstances female leadership can play an effective role in promoting legislative change. Using key informant interviews and political economy analysis, Pragyna Mahpara shows that informal relationships that existed between the Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, the Women’s Minister and the leaders of the civil society policy coalition were critical in enactment of the law. Pragyna Mahpara draws attention to the fact that while policy coalition leaders and female executives were successful in pushing for adoption of the law, their influence at the implementation stage remains limited. Understanding why implementation gaps arise is a critical area of concern in matters related to gender equality policy, as many countries see laws passed but not implemented. Effective implementation relies not only on state capacity and political will at the top, but also on how gender equality policies are interpreted by public servants at different levels, and how frontline workers are monitored, and is also influenced by the patriarchal norms and ideas held by the public servants charged with implementing reforms (Goetz 1997; Staudt 1990).

Similarly, in her article, Susana Araujo also highlights the importance of informal networks that exist between feminist activists, NGO leaders and feminist bureaucrats (femocrats) in the negotiation processes of the Peruvian-Spanish Strategic Framework 2013–2016. Susana Araujo shows that while formal processes had excluded the participation of women’s rights groups, the informal relations that Spanish and Peruvian femocrats had with Peruvian feminist organisations and Spanish NGOs were critical in ensuring gender equality remained on the aid priority agenda. The informal dialogues this group had outside the official channels were critical for Spanish ‘femocrats’ and representatives of Spanish NGOs in influencing the final agreement.

Collectively, these articles draw attention to the role of critical actors both inside and outside the state (Childs and Krook 2009), and informal networks and inter-personal capital (Waylen 2017; Nazneen et al. 2019) influencing gender equality policy outcomes. While the presence of feminist leadership inside the state is critical for policy change, the relationship these leaders have with autonomous feminist actors and women’s movement remain key in sustaining progressive changes (Htun and Laurel Weldon 2018). The articles unpack the ‘black box’ of how policies are negotiated and reveal that women leaders have their own informal networks that they rely on to circumvent the difficulties of not being a part of ‘old boys’ clubs’ in politics. They also raise the question of what happens in contexts where pro-gender equality leaders are absent from seats of power, and women’s movements and feminist activists do not have informal networks to rely on.

Diffused leadership and sticky norms

Apart from women leaders in executive positions and the bureaucracy, several articles focus on what factors facilitate movement leadership. Gabriela Artazo, Agustina Remiya and Sofia Menoyo’s article on young feminist leaders in Argentina; Deepta Chopra’s article on Shaheen Bagh highlighting the role of first-time-older women-leaders; and Jalila Haider and Miguel Loureiro’s article on Hazara women-protest-leaders, all draw attention to the diffused nature of movement leadership and how this lack of formal, top-down leadership helps facilitate dialogue between generations, intersectional collaboration, and the continuation of the movement in contexts of state repression, as there is no single leader to arrest. Invariably, this raises the age-old question of whether diffuse leadership is a strength, and more compatible with feminist ethics of leadership. Also, in contexts where possibilities of repression are high, whether is it a strength to have diffuse(d) leadership, rather than top-down, hierarchical, organised structures with clear leadership positions.

Finally, the articles that focus on women protest leaders in fragile and conflict- affected settings note that women protest leaders not only face push back from the state, but also face backlash from their communities. Julia Hartviksen, in her article, examines how women community leaders in Guatemala, who are the most vocal in protests against palm oil cultivation, not only face threats and intimidation from landed elites, but also experience bullying or ‘psychological violence’ from within the community. In their article, Jalila Haider and Miguel Loureiro point out that while the Hazara women leaders have become the face of the movement, and that their involvement shifted the focus of the movement from ‘male-dominated violent protests focused on expressions of anger, to female-focused peaceful sit-ins, holding the state accountable for a lack of security’ (this issue, 411), the women protest leaders are excluded from decision-making structures, including within their own homes. The authors draw attention to the level of high harassment and abuse faced by women protestors who are ‘constantly … shamed … not only by strangers within the community but by their own family members and neighbours’ (Haider and Loureiro, this issue, 424). However, the authors also point out that the consciousness of women protest leaders has changed as a result of their participation–and the way they view state accountability has shifted. Whether Hazara women becoming the face of public protests germinates a larger shift in gender power relations remains to be seen, but the authors also draw cautionary attention to the non-linear nature of change.

Collectively, the backlash faced by women protestors draws attention to sticky gender norms and gatekeepers at the household and community levels, and in politics, who resist change, reinforce patriarchal constraints, and block women’s access to resources, public spaces and power (Cheema, Liaquat and Mohmand, forthcoming). Women’s visibility and active leadership within protest movements is a necessary but not sufficient condition for collective empowerment in the absence of wider shifts in sticky patriarchal social norms (Nazneen et al. 2019). For feminist activists and agencies working on fostering women’s leadership and women's entry into formal political spaces, a key issue is: how to remove the influence of gatekeepers and shift sticky norms?

Conclusion

There are five major conclusions to draw from the articles contained in this double issue. These conclusions return to the central questions that framed this special issue: how movements are sustaining thriving, robust and resilient spaces and alliances in a world of multiple crises? And how is a politics of solidarity created at the national level, and transnational solidarity pursued?

The first is that there is sustained resistance from feminist groups and gender justice actors across the globe, who are challenging the ever-evolving nature of hetero-patriarchy and the accompanying backlash facing feminist politics. What might be seen as contentious issues of leadership and space within feminist movements and across generations are, in fact, movements thinking through business ‘as unusual’. Rather than reading discomfort and disagreement within feminist movements as these movements being at a crossroads, it is more productive to acknowledge that the structural factors that shape feminist resistance are consistently being unlearned and challenged by those in movements seeking larger visions of freedom and justice. It is this battle around what forms of change are desired across groups that produces opportunities for differentiated solidarity, and new ways of political organising.

The second is that the racialised nature of global political backlash from Brazil to Europe has re-centred an anti-racist tradition within political organising. This approach to thinking about the backlash and democratic backsliding is one that seeks not to ignore anti-Blackness, but consciously centres it as key to the politics of public engagement in a world in which white nationalism is shaping conservative politics. In this regard, articles in this issue draw our attention to transnational and Afro-diasporic connections that have been critical to making links about the Black experience, globally. Other articles also focus our attention on how ethnic and religious minority groups in Asia have evolved strategies of engagement that forge a politics of differentiated solidarity.

Our third conclusion, as observed in Awino Okech (2020), is that care as an ethic of feminist organising features in the way in which the women and feminist movements explored in this issue organise spaces of public protest. From Pakistan, Nigeria, Brazil, India, Argentina, and Lebanon, care and wellbeing are viewed as central to movement building and sustaining feminist resistance. Centring wellbeing and communities of care has become key to feminist movement debates and is viewed as an important strategy for sustaining movements (see Horn 2020). Feminists have reframed care as a central part of building solidarity.

Fourth, articles in this issue draw attention to the need for an effective feminist presence in policy and formal political spaces to counter anti-gender equality backlash, and roll-back of the state. A seat at the table allows for sustaining the focus on policy gains, and pushing the policy agenda in formal spaces. While street activism and engagements in cultural space are important to make visible the issues and create a public discourse, not having a seat at the table means that these demands remain ignored in policy, or that gains already made in policy can be reversed. Feminist activism requires presence across multiple spaces.

Finally, many articles in this issue focus our attention on a distributed leadership model as a key feature of movement organising. This model shifts focus away from individuals and centres collective concerns across social groups and political actors interested in social transformation. Commonly referred to as a ‘leaderless model’, what the articles in this issue draw attention to is not the absence of leaders but the multiplicity of leaders working across spaces and needs, particularly during public protests and within protest sites.

This horizontal and collective way of organising has been a defining feature of feminist movement building and political protest over decades. The strength and determination shown by feminist and gender justice activists in the face of unprecedented attacks on the rights of anyone deemed to be ‘other’ – and in the context of extreme crisis across a variety of fronts gives us hope that that despite the multiple challenges we are facing as a world, a better, safer, fairer future for all is still possible.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sohela Nazneen

Sohela Nazneen is Fellow based at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex. Sohela is a political economist, leading IDS’ work on gender, politics, and governance. She has published widely on women’s empowerment, violence against women, feminist movement and coalitional politics, including in World Development, Contemporary South Asia, and Women’s Studies International Forum. Her most recent book is Negotiating Gender equity in the Global South: The Politics of Domestic Violence Policy (2019). She convenes IDS’ flagship MA Gender and Development programme. Postal address: Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, Library Road, Falmer, BN1 9RE, UK. Email: [email protected]

Awino Okech

Awino Okech is a Reader in Political Sociology at SOAS, University of London. She is a member of the Human Sciences Research Council editorial board, the Board of Trustees of SOAS University of London, co-chair of the Just Associates Board and adjunct faculty with the African Leadership Centre at King’s College, London. Awino’s recent publications include ‘Movement Building Responses to COVID-19: Lessons from the JASS Mobilisation Fund’ (2021), ‘Feminist Digital Counterpublics: Challenging Femicide in Kenya and South Africa’ (2021), ‘African Feminist Epistemic Communities and Decoloniality’ (2020), and Gender, Protests and Political Change in Africa (2020). Postal address: SOAS University of London, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG. Email: [email protected]

Notes

1 NGOization refers to the process in which social movements become professionalised, institutionalised, and bureaucratised, losing their political edge as they do so.