The Impact of Contemporary Women's
Movements in Multicultural Europe
Beatrice Halsaa
Senter for tverrfaglig kjønnsforskning
Universitetet i Oslo
Foredrag på
Kvinnekonferanse 2013 - 100 år med rett til å stemme
Universitetet i Tromsø 28-30 august
The FEMCIT project 2007-1011:
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www.femcit.org
financed by the EU
40 researchers
comprehensive research in 13 European states,
covering the North, East, West and South
covering the period from the late 1960s
Modest statements:
But there is no indication that as yet, despite its enormous
growth, the organized women’s liberation movement can
claim more than nuisance value
Women’s liberation movement is, in concept and
organization, the most public revolutionary movement ever to
have existed. It is able to make the most revolutionary
statements in public without anyone seeming bothered
Juliet Mitchell (1973): Women’s Estate
The impact of women’s movements:
• underresearched
• challenging:
• women’s movements change, and do not have porous borders,
• women’s movements are not the only actors, thus
• impact cannot easily be separated from the impact of other social
movements, of media, public policies etc.
• it matters if you assess short or long-time impact, and
• movement impact is related to political opportunities, timing, and
last but not least specific issue.
Impact on everyday life and women’s self-esteem
matters.
Virginia Woolf in A Room of One’s Own:
"Women have served all these centuries as lookingglasses possessing the magic and delicious power of
reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size. (…)
That serves to explain in part the necessity that women
so often are to men. (…) How is he to go on giving
judgement, civilizing natives, making laws, writing
books, dressing up and speechifying at banquets, unless
he can see himself at breakfast and at dinner at least
twice the size he really is?"
Women’s movements are
underresearched
Runa Haukaa, author of «Bak
slagordene»,
about the new women’s movement in
Norway, from 1982.
The first and only comprehensive
discussion of the «new» movement
until 2013
Foto: Nina S. Strand,
(Kampdager, KILDEN)
Hilde Danielsen (red.) 2013 (When
the personal became poltical. The
new women- and men’s movement in
the 1970’s)
FEMCIT: Gendered Citizenship in Multicultural Europe: The
Impact of Contemporary Women’s Movements 2007-2011
 comprehensive comparative research
 Demands, practices and impact of
women’s movements activism
6 dimensions of citizenship: intimate,
bodily, multicultural, social,
economic and political
21 sub-projects on selected feminist
issues
 ethnicity/racialization as a crosscutting issue
Remaking Citizenship:
New understandings, overall assessments, policy input and recommendations
Cross citizenship dimension analysis:
Reconsidering core concepts, sensitising questions, close cross-WP readings,.
Women’s movements, gender and diversity as common threads
Political
Citizenship
Issues:
- quotas
- being repr.
-female repr.
Cases:
Macedonia
Poland
Sweden
UK
Social
Citizenship:
Economic
Citizenship
Ethnic and
Religious
Citizenship
Bodily and
Sexual
Citizenship
Issues:
- child care
- parental leave
Issues:
- employment
- elderly care
Issues:
- violence
- faith
Issues:
- abortion
- prostitution
Cases:
Czech Rep.
Finland
Norway
Spain
Cases:
France
Norway
Poland
Cases
Norway
Spain
UK
Cases:
Czech Rep.
Netherlands
Portugal
Sweden
Intimate
Citizenship:
Issues:
-partnership
- repr. rights
- sexual identities
- sexual violence
Cases:
Bulgaria
Norway
Portugal
UK
Contemporary Women’s movements: Citizenship claims and practices
Example: violence against women
Examples of critical acts:
• Shelters for women
• Crimes against Women:
International Tribunal in
Brussels, 1976
• 1981 Activists mark Nov. 25
Examples of impact:
• 1993 UN Declaration to Eliminate
Violence against Women
• 1997 EWL Observatory on Violence
against Women
• 1999 UN declares Nov. 25
International Day against Violence
against Women
Example from Spain: Law 1/2004 on Comprehensive
Protection Measures against Gender Violence
Result of the feminist movement’s efforts since 1993
A 'pioneering' law:
• defines gender violence as a problem of gender
inequality: 'the most brutal symbol of gender
inequality' (the Preamble), defined as result of
patriarchal structures,
• direct consequence of unequal power relationships
between men and women
• Special Courts for the hearing of cases of VAW, and a
special prosecutor for crimes against women
Impact on law and policy – a continuum:
Access impact: new voices are being listened to: YES
Agenda impact: new demands on the political agenda; YES
Policy impact: adoption of legislation or policy in line with
demands; YES
Output impact: measures to ensure the new legislation – ??
Full impact: when/ if the underlying hardships are removed or
lessened - NO
FEMCIT has explored
– women’s movements mobilisation and organizations
– women’s movements claims and frames
– women’s movements impact/ resonance/
transformations
• for individual citizens; civil society, policy-making
• on selected issues in selected countries
FEMCIT opening
conference
FEMCIT PhD course in
Prague
Bodily citizenship: prostitution
Bodily citizenship
Abortion rights advocates gather in Smith Park in Jackson,
Mississippi, to rally support for a woman's right to an
abortion, Saturday, July 15, 2006. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)
Economic citizenship
•
a core demand of feminist movements –
• this demand has obviously been influential
• Western democracies have aligned themselves to the
normative models of women’s economic citizenship that were
prevalent in many of the ex-Soviet countries prior to 1989
Measures to reduce the “double burden” that limits women’s
access to full economic citizenship have been largely predicated
on the “activation” of women workers through the
“commodification” of care services to households with (elderly)
care needs. - the family 'going public' (Hernes, 1987:135)
A “win-win” scenario of the “de-gendered”
universal citizen worker paradigm?
Or producing new forms of segregation between
“minoritized” and “majoritized” women on the
labour market?
In all of the countries studied in FEMCIT economic
citizenship group (France, Poland, Norway), migrant
and “minoritized” social groups face a series of
obstacles in gaining access to economic citizenship
rights on the same basis as majority groups
Intimate citizenship
• Gay pride, Oslo
2013
• Lesbian mothers’
section
Minority ethnic women – indigenous,
Roma, migrant women
Social citizenship
From an art
exhibition,
Holsmbu,
Norway
Political citizenship
The legacy of women’s movements:
• Transformations of culture; everyday life
– new norms and practices of mothering, parenting, intimacy
– new notions and cultural expressions
• Access for women - procedural changes
– access to employment, to political and religious institutions,
education etc.
• Policy changes - substantive changes
– gender equality policies, mainstreaming, quotas, abortion on
demand, gender research etc.