A long and ongoing challenge for social justice movements has been how to address difference. Traditional strategies have often emphasized universalizing messages and common identities as means of facilitating collective action. Feminist movements, gay liberation movements, racial justice movements, and even labour movements, have all focused predominantly on respective singular dimensions of oppression. Each has called on diverse groups of people to mobilize, but without necessarily acknowledging or grappling with other relevant dimensions of identity and oppression. While focusing on commonality can be an effective means of mobilization, universalist messages can also obscure difference and can serve to exclude and marginalize groups in already precarious positions. Scholars and activists, particularly those located at the intersection of these movements, have long advocated for more inclusive approaches that acknowledge the significance and complexity of different social locations, with mixed success. Gendered Mobilizations and Intersectional Challenges provides a much-needed intersectional analysis of social movements in Europe and North America. With an emphasis on gendered mobilization, it looks at movements traditionally understood and/or classified as singularly gendered as well as those organized around other dimensions of identity and oppression or at the intersection of multiple dimensions.

This collection provides a clear analytical framework for comparison across cases that will allow us to draw useful theoretical and empirical conclusions and explore the dynamics of intersectional practice in a variety of institutional, cultural and policy making contexts.

This book includes essays that directly uncover how power asymmetries and related forms of marginalization and oppression function in the political and policy arenas with a special emphasis on the intersection of several systems of subordination. This edited volume tackles two main questions: first, what are the main claims, struggles, and possibilities of contemporary intersectional feminisms; and second, how shall we, as scholars, address intersectional (feminist) activisms in our research – theoretically, methodologically, and empirically. These issues are debated from several intersectional (feminist) perspectives, locations, and positionalities. The globally oriented and empirically grounded scope of this volume is undeniable. This book goes beyond the Western hegemony in intersectionality-related research and knowledge production, bringing in practices, experiences, and critical perspectives of intersectional (feminist) scholars and activists who are not necessarily located in the most privileged social, political, and financial milieus. This book will be of interest to students and scholars from across the social sciences and humanities with an interest in intersectionality, gender, feminism, racism, LGBT+ and queer studies, activism and social movement studies. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Journal of Women, Politics, and Policy.

Intersectionality is one of the most popular theoretical paradigms in gender studies and feminist theory today. Initially developed to explore how gender and race interact in the experiences of US women of colour, it has since been taken up in different disciplines and national contexts, where it is used to investigate a wide range of intersecting social identities and experiences of exclusion and subordination. This volume explores intersectionality studies as a burgeoning international field with a growing body of research, which is increasingly drawn upon in policy, political interventions, and social activism. Bringing together contributors from different disciplines and locations, The Routledge International Handbook of Intersectionality Studies maps the history and travels of intersectionality between continents and countries and takes up debates surrounding the privileged role of race in intersectional analysis, the ways in which intersectional analysis should or should not be carried out, and the political implications of thinking intersectional analysis and thought. Opening up new avenues of enquiry for a future generation of scholars and practitioners, it will appeal to scholars of sociology, gender studies, politics, and cultural studies with interests in feminist thought, social identity, social exclusion, and social inequality.

What happens to those living at the margins of US politics and policy – trapped between multiple struggles: gender-based violence, poverty, homelessness, unaffordable healthcare, mass incarceration and immigration? In this book, Margaret Perez Brower offers the concept of 'intersectional advocacy' to reveal how select organizations addressing gender-based violence are closing policy gaps that perpetuate inequalities by gender, race, ethnicity, and class. Intersectional advocacy is a roadmap for rethinking public policy. The book captures how advocacy groups strategically contest, reimagine, and reconfigure policy institutions using comprehensive new strategies that connect issues together. As these groups challenge traditional ways of addressing the most pressing social issues in the US, they uncover deep inequities that are housed within these institutions. Ultimately, organizations practicing intersectional advocacy illuminate how to redraw the boundaries of policies in ways that transform US democracy to be more representative, equitable, and just.

This book examines the use of ‘intersectionality’ in UK policy and practice, with a specific focus on NGOs. The book outlines the five meanings of intersectionality in equality work and provides practical insights for applying intersectional theory. A valuable resource for policymakers, practitioners, and scholars.

Examining the ways in which feminist and queer activists confront privilege through the use of intersectionality, this edited collection presents empirical case studies from around the world to consider how intersectionality has been taken up (or indeed contested) by activists in order to expose and resist privilege. The volume sets out three key ways in which intersectionality operates within feminist and queer movements: it is used as a collective identity, as a strategy for forming coalitions, and as a repertoire for inclusivity. The case studies presented in this book then evaluate the extent to which some, or all, of these types of intersectional activism are used to confront manifestations of privilege. Drawing upon a wide range of cases from across time and space, this volume explores the difficulties with which activists often grapple when it comes to translating the desire for intersectionality into a praxis which confronts privilege. Addressing inter-related and politically relevant questions concerning how we apply and theorise intersectionality in our studies of feminist and queer movements, this timely edited collection will be of interest to students and scholars from across the social sciences and humanities with an interest in gender and feminism, LGBT+ and queer studies, and social movement studies.

This book illuminates the ways in which Chicanas, Puerto Rican women, and other Latinas organize and lead social movements, either on the ground or digitally, in major cities of the continental United States and Puerto Rico. It shows how they challenge racism, sexism, homophobia, and anti-immigrant policies through their political praxis and spiritual activism. Drawing from a range of disciplines and perspectives, academic and activist authors offer unique insights into environmental justice, peace and conflict resolution, women’s rights, LGBTQ coalition-building, and more—all through a distinctive Latina lens. Designed for use in a wide range of college courses, this book is also aimed at practitioners, community organizers, and grassroots leaders.

This Handbook maps the expanding field of gender and EU politics, giving an overview of the fundamentals and new directions of the sub- discipline, and serving as a reference book for (gender) scholars and students at different levels interested in the EU. In investigating the gendered nature of European integration and gender relations in the EU as a political system, it summarizes and assesses the research on gender and the EU to this point in time, identifies existing research gaps in gender and EU studies and addresses directions for future research. Distinguished contributors from the US, the UK and continental Europe, and from across disciplines from political science, sociology, economics and law, expertly inform about gender approaches and summarize the state of the art in gender and EU studies. The Routledge Handbook of Gender and EU Politics provides an essential and authoritative source of information for students, scholars and researchers in EU studies/ politics, gender studies/ politics, political theory, comparative politics, international relations, political and gender sociology, political economy, European and legal studies/ law.

Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Italy among political activists of the LGBTIQ movement and the traditionalist movement during the “anti-gender” campaign, this book provides a dynamic picture of their sustained interactions. Through an analysis of the contentious strategies, discourses, and performances of both the LGBTIQ and the traditionalist movements from a strategic interactionist perspective, it considers the key actors involved in this struggle over normative and social change, showing how activists on both sides are confronted with different dilemmas, influencing each other’s choices, practices and identities at the individual and collective levels. Approaching social movements as interactive processes, the author deploys the concepts of social performance and gender performativity to illustrate the ways in which activists interact with and within gender norms, and how they reproduce or contest gender hierarchies as they protest, thus revealing the centrality of gender to the analysis of processes of recruitment and mobilization, strategies, frames and forms of organization. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology and political science with interests in social movements and gender.