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Inclusion, Solidarity, and Social Movements: The Global Movement against Gender Violence

March 2006
Perspectives on Politics 4(01)

Authors:

Purdue University

Women's movements are increasingly divided along lines of race, sexuality, ethnicity, and class. When such division obstructs coop-eration, women lose their most effective advocates in the public sphere. How can movements overcome these divisions and improve their influence on policy and society? In some contexts, it seems that activists are able to overcome such divisions without denying politically salient conflicts. The transnational movement against gender violence, for example, mobilizes people not only across differences of race, class and sexuality but also across differences of language, national context, level of development, and the like. How do they do this? I argue that the movement against gender violence has achieved cooperation through the development of norms of inclusivity. Such norms include a commitment to descriptive representation, the facilitation of separate organization for disadvantaged social groups, and a commitment to building consensus with institutionalized dissent. Developing such norms is not the only possible path to cooperation, but it is an important and overlooked one. It illuminates a way of maintaining solidarity and improving policy influence without denying or sublimating the differences and conflicts among activists. Existing scholarship on social movements that attributes successful cooperation to shared interests, identities, or opportunities, is incomplete because it does not take account of relations of domination among activists who cooperate. Attending to the context of structural inequality in which social movements operate improves our understanding of social mobilization and illuminates overlooked paths to cooperation.

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Article: “Inclusion, Solidarity, and SocialMovements: The Global

Movement against Gender Violence”

S. Laurel Weldon

Issue: March 2006

Journal:

Perspectives on Politics

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Inclusion, Solidarity, and Social

Movements: The Global Movement

against Gender Violence

S. Laurel Weldon

Women’s movements are increasingly divided along lines of race, sexuality, ethnicity, and class. When such division obstructs coop-

eration, women lose their most effective advocates in the public sphere. How can movements overcome these divisions and improve

their inﬂuence on policy and society? In some contexts, it seems that activists are able to overcome such divisions without denying

politically salient conﬂicts. The transnational movement against gender violence, for example, mobilizes people not only across

differences of race, class and sexuality but also across differences of language, national context, level of development, and the like.

How do they do this? I argue that the movement against gender violence has achieved cooperation through the development of

norms of inclusivity. Such norms include a commitment to descriptive representation, the facilitation of separate organization for

disadvantaged social groups, and a commitment to building consensus with institutionalized dissent. Developing such norms is not

the only possible path to cooperation, but it is an important and overlooked one. It illuminates a way of maintaining solidarity and

improving policy inﬂuence without denying or sublimating the differences and conﬂicts among activists. Existing scholarship on

social movements that attributes successful cooperation to shared interests, identities, or opportunities, is incomplete because it does

not take account of relations of domination among activists who cooperate. Attending to the context of structural inequality in

which social movements operate improves our understanding of social mobilization and illuminates overlooked paths to cooperation.

omen’s movements have reshaped the world’s

democracies, demanding that governments and

citizens pay attention to “women’s issues” such as

pay equity, violence, feminization of poverty, reproductive

rights, and representation.

But women’s movements, like

many contemporary social movements, are increasingly

divided along lines of race, sexuality, ethnicity, and class.

When such division obstructs cooperation, women lose

their most effective advocates in the public sphere. With a

renewed assault on women’s reproductive rights, eco-

nomic security, and freedom from violence in the United

States and around the world, women need effective sources

of policy inﬂuence more than ever.

It is critical, then,

that movements overcome these divisions and improve

their inﬂuence on policy and society. But can they?

Some scholars argue that a return to universalism, a

strategy of emphasizing commonalities rather than differ-

ences, will re-invigorate left movements and help them

regain policy inﬂuence.

Others argue that the perception

of a common identity (separate from that of all human-

kind) is critical to successful mobilization: Even essential-

ist identities that deny real differences can strengthen

movements.

In some contexts, however, activists are able to over-

come such divisions without denying politically salient

conﬂicts and differences. The transnational movement

against gender violence, for example, mobilizes people not

only across differences of race, class, and sexuality but also

across differences of language, national context, level of

development, and the like.

Though initially hobbled by

internal division, activists have united over two decades,

successfully promoting a number of international agree-

ments.

Violence against women has by no means been

eliminated, but activists have succeeded in dramatically

increasing the awareness of and resources devoted to com-

bating violence against women around the globe. How

did they do this? I use a case study of this movement over

more than two decades to answer this question.

The success of transnational organizing on gender vio-

lence has previously been attributed to processes of stra-

tegic issue-framing or changes in the political opportunity

structure.

But here I argue that the movement against

S. Laurel Weldon is associate professor of political science at

Purdue University (weldon@polsci.purdue.edu). The author

thanks Jane Mansbridge for her help. Thanks also to Karen

Beckwith, Elisabeth Clemens, Jennifer Hochschild, Aaron

Hoffman, Debra Liebowitz, and Iris Young for comments

on earlier drafts. Thanks to Anne Walker and Vicki Semler

for helpful conversations, and to Charlotte Bunch, Arvonne

Fraser, and Jutta Joachim for helping with key details.

Reviewers for Perspectives provided many valuable sugges-

tions. Errors and shortcomings remain my responsibility.

Articles

March 2006

Vol. 4/No. 1 55

gender violence has achieved cooperation through the

development of norms of inclusivity. Such norms include

a commitment to descriptive representation, the facili-

tation of separate organization for disadvantaged social

groups, and a commitment to building consensus with

institutionalized dissent. Developing such norms is not

the only possible path to cooperation, but it is an impor-

tant and overlooked one. It illuminates a way of maintain-

ing solidarity and improving policy inﬂuence without

denying or sublimating the differences and conﬂicts among

activists.

Existing scholarship on social movements that attributes

successful cooperation to shared interests, identities, or

opportunities, is incomplete because it does not take

account of relations of domination among activists who

cooperate.

Activists need to communicate and coordi-

nate their actions, but in contexts where some social groups

dominate others, the relations of domination distort com-

munication, making misunderstanding and conﬂict more

common.

Such relations obstruct the development of

shared identities. Attending to the context of structural

inequality in which social movements operate improves

our understanding of social mobilization and illuminates

overlooked paths to cooperation.

Inclusive Procedures Facilitate

Cooperation

The same divisions and conﬂicts that permeate society

also affect social movements: Activists must construct coali-

tions across these divisions in order to command public

attention and inﬂuence. In addition to the sheer difﬁculty

of communicating with others from different cultural back-

grounds, power imbalances among activists distort and

impede communication.

Historically marginalized groups

or constituencies, even when they are nominally included,

often perceive more privileged groups as dominating activ-

ist decision-making.

Frequently, activists from the more

privileged group do not perceive or understand the prob-

lems. Relations of mistrust between such groups poison

relations between activists, make communication difﬁ-

cult, and ultimately can lead to the fragmentation and

subsequent decline of the movement.

One way to solve

at least some of these problems would be to eliminate the

broader conﬂict, to redress longstanding relations of social

inequality. But to directly solve these problems before orga-

nizing is usually not an option. If such social cleavages

cannot be eliminated, how can activists cooperate in their

midst?

Democratic theorists argue that procedural mecha-

nisms that are more inclusive, especially those that give

marginalized groups a stronger voice in deliberative pro-

ceedings, will create greater trust and improve communi-

cation among the participants, by countering the distorting

inﬂuence of power-differentials on discussion, and help-

ing activists to move to discussion of possible common

ground.

Measures that aim at securing a voice for mar-

ginalized sub-groups in group deliberations let marginal-

ized sub-groups rest assured that privileged members of

the group will not entirely dominate deliberations.

They

can then spend less time struggling against other activists

and more time working to develop a common plan of

action. Below, I specify three features of such inclusive

political communication: a commitment to work towards

agreement on speciﬁc issues while expecting dissent;

descriptive representation; and self-organization of mar-

ginalized groups.

Self-organization

The most effective way to ensure that marginalized sub-

groups or “internal minorities” have the opportunity to

develop and voice their distinctive perspectives is to ensure

that they have the opportunity for self-organization. Fem-

inist theorists have stressed the importance of autono-

mous organization by women, that is, organization under

conditions where women have the opportunity to set the

agenda and rules of engagement.

Democratic theorists

have argued that when dominated groups form a “counter-

public” or separate discussion among themselves, they are

better able to counter their marginalization in the broader

public sphere.

Such counter-publics function as “bases

and training grounds for agitational activities,” and pro-

vide a mechanism whereby marginalized groups can develop

and disseminate new concepts and ideas to the dominant

public sphere.

Self-organization permits groups to speak

as a group to some degree, and this gives their statements

more weight. This helps to put interlocutors on a more

equal footing.

Descriptive representation

Without descriptive representation (the physical presence

of members of marginalized groups) there are no mem-

bers of the group who can self-organize, develop, and

articulate the minority group perspectives. Descriptive rep-

resentation, or the bodily presence of members of margin-

alized groups helps to ensure that the ﬁnal product reﬂects

the perspective of the marginalized group, while also con-

ferring legitimacy on the proceedings: Symbolically, the

visible participation of members of marginalized groups

in deliberations increases the trust in the process by other

members of the group.

In order to overcome mistrust and include marginal-

ized groups in discussions, descriptive representation must

not be tokenism, but involve members of marginalized

groups in such numbers and contexts that they can dis-

cuss issues among themselves, set an independent agenda,

and present a perspective critical of the dominant group if

necessary. Although such measures will not solve all con-

ﬂicts among activists or guarantee solidarity, they can build

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Inclusion, Solidarity, and Social Movements

56 Perspectives on Politics

trust and improve communication even in the context of

severe social inequality.

Search for agreement and institutionalized dissent

Inclusive political communication requires a spirit of open-

ness, where all parties both genuinely listen to others and

seek to advance others’ understanding of their positions

and perspectives. In conditions of social inequality and

difference, truly open deliberations are likely to be char-

acterized by conﬂict. In such a context, institutionalizing

dissent is important to ensure that a search for agreement

does not silence weaker parties. Without such procedures,

the assumption of homogeneity of points of view tends to

reinforce dominant group positions and makes it harder

for marginalized groups to disagree.

On the other hand, without any commitment to a com-

mon project, dominant groups easily ignore marginalized

groups to pursue their own interests, claiming they have

agreed to disagree. By contrast, deliberations can be made

more inclusive by retaining a goal of some degree of agree-

ment, undertaking consensus-building on speciﬁc ques-

tions or contexts, but expecting disagreement (even

fundamental disagreement) as part of the process.

Deﬁning norms

When these principles of inclusive political practice become

norms for movement activists, they will improve move-

ment deliberations. Norms are standards of behavior, rang-

ing from standards of mere appropriateness to standards

delineating rights and obligations.

Actors “use norms as

reference points in their communication and interaction.”

Actors arrive at new norms or reinforce existing ones by

acknowledging one another’s full or partial compliance

with norms. We would know that activists are using norms

when they behave in ways that reﬂect these principles and

refer to them in their deliberations.

Such norms of inclusivity produce decisions and issue-

frames that more constituencies can support, help move-

ments avoid foundering on the shoals of internal conﬂict,

and ultimately improve the policy inﬂuence of move-

ments. But norms of inclusivity are not necessary for coop-

eration; one can imagine other paths to agreement.

Competing Explanations

Below I consider other possible explanations for the emer-

gence of cooperation, suggesting that these accounts of

the emergence of cooperation overlook the importance of

intra-group relations of domination and the inclusive pro-

cedures that helped activists overcome these divisions.

Other explanations for successful cooperation include com-

mon material interests, shared identities, and political

opportunities.

Common material interests

Some expect cooperation to emerge most effectively where

activists share common material interests, or at least do

not have to overcome material conﬂicts of interest. O’Brien

et al. (2000) argue that the movement against gender vio-

lence has been successful while women’s international move-

ments for economic justice have failed because in the justice

movement women are divided by conﬂicts of economic

interest while in the movement against violence case no

such conﬂict arises. On this view, violence against women

is a non-zero-sum issue, an “issue which united women

across a vast ideological spectrum, and where gains in the

physical security and human rights of particular groups of

women are seen as gains for all, not as potentially detract-

ing from the opportunities of others.”

On this account, then, it is the type of interest that

matters; some types of conﬂict of interest (for example,

economic, zero-sum) are less amenable to resolution than

others. But it is often difﬁcult to separate interests, even

economic interests, from the way they are framed. Refram-

ing an issue can transform what seemed like a zero-sum

conﬂict to a “win-win” situation. Middle class and work-

ing class women have opposing interests in relation to

child care, because higher wages for child care workers

drive up the cost of child care (that middle class women

pay). But women are confronted with these seeming con-

ﬂicts of interests only because women are still doing the

majority of paid and unpaid childcare work. If men were

to take more responsibility for childcare, and if work-

places were to be reformed (shorter workdays, cooperative

daycare arrangements, paid maternity and parental leave,

pay equity for women so they could afford to pay the

higher wages for child care, etc.) so that all workers could

more easily be parents, all women would beneﬁt. Some

common set of policy proposals could address the inequi-

table distribution of childcare responsibilities that is at the

root of this conﬂict, and could be said to be in the interest

of both groups of women. Framing the conﬂict in terms

of the need for such policies could transform and largely

eliminate what seems like a conﬂict of interest.

Conﬂicting economic interests arise because “cheap

female labour in the South can draw jobs away from women

in the North”

, but both Southern and Northern share a

common interest in establishing better living standards

and wages for all women. Although even slight improve-

ments in wages and labor rights for workers in Mexico

have probably resulted in losing of jobs to locations in

Asia that can offer even lower wages, women in the global

South have been able to organize around common eco-

nomic interests in spite of these differences. Transnational

organizing has also been successful on other economic

issues: In the anti-sweatshop, anti-free trade, and anti-

globalization movements, northern trade unionists have

allied with third world workers to promote tougher labor

standards in free trade agreements and in third world

March 2006

Vol. 4/No. 1 57

industries. The nature of the interest in itself does not

seem to explain the success of a global movement.

Economic conﬂicts are not uniquely fundamental,

immutable, or even separable from, conﬂicts based on

class, gender, sexuality and the like.

Nor need one take

the status quo as the only frame of reference within which

to establish interests. Because interests can be redeﬁned by

taking a different frame of reference, whether conﬂicts of

interest (economic or otherwise) politically divide a group

depends in part on how those interests are perceived and

framed.

If shared interests translated directly into cooperation,

we would expect there to be little lag time between activ-

ists discussing an issue or problem and acting collectively

to address the problem. If (as seems more likely) shared

interests merely enable cooperation (as necessary but not

sufﬁcient), then cooperation might emerge slowly until

activists can devise shared interest frames, often after inclu-

sive deliberations. Sorting out the sequencing of events

would help decide which theoretical account best describes

the causal chain: Did activists perceive their shared inter-

ests prior to achieving success at cooperation, or did the

reframing of interests emerge from more inclusive delib-

erations? I argue it is the latter.

Collective identity

Perceiving one’s interests as those of a woman or worker

depends on one’s self-identiﬁcation as such.

This activa-

tion or salience of an identity is central to many theories

of political mobilization in social movements. People are

called into action when they identify with (or want to

identify with) a group, role, or value they associate with a

movement. The assertion of a common identity as women

probably has underlain the success of women’s inter-

national organizing, at least in the early period at the turn

of the century.

The development of a common identity

has made cooperation among women possible across bor-

ders, classes, ethnicities, and sexualities.

Although social movement scholars agree that the con-

struction of a common identity is critical for mobilizing a

constituency,

such scholars do not claim that social move-

ments draw on pre-existing, primordial identities. Such a

claim essentializes social groups, falsely attributing a sim-

ilar underlying essence or fundamental nature to a group

that is actually diverse. Because the social groups around

which movements mobilize (such as “women”, “people of

color”, “the working class”, or “lesbians”) are themselves

riven by social cleavages that mirror society at large, social

movement scholars focus on how groups construct a com-

mon identity as part of the process of mobilization, rather

than simply expressing underlying similarities or shared

experiences.

But if collective identities are produced in the process of

collective action, then it is harder to argue that these iden-

tities are the basis for political mobilization in the ﬁrst

place. If such identities must be constructed in ways that

suppress difference in order to enhance political mobiliza-

tion, this suggests that cooperation requires sublimating

or obscuring some politically relevant differences. What

motivates those activists from groups whose core afﬁlia-

tions are suppressed to join the movement? The intuitive

appeal of the concept of identity as a mobilizing tool is

greatly diminished if one argues, as most social movement

scholars do, and as I do here, that collective identities are

produced by movements as well as causes of them. Again,

the sequencing of events helps sort out which explanation

best captures social movement dynamics: do activists ﬁrst

forge a common identity and then cooperate, or do com-

mon identities emerge from cooperative contexts?

Framing processes

The framing of issues also affects the mobilization of social

movements. Collective action frames are ways of under-

standing and presenting the world that emphasize the injus-

tice of social conditions that may not otherwise be

recognized as unfair. Through emotional and cognitive

appeals, these frames convince participants that their cause

is pressing and legitimate, and mobilize them to action.

Changing issue-frames facilitates cooperation: “Activ-

ists frame issues by identifying and providing convincing

explanations for powerful symbolic events, which in turn

become catalysts for the growth of [transnational] net-

works. Symbolic interpretation is part of the process of

persuasion by which networks create awareness and expand

their constituencies”.

If frames cause cooperation, they must precede it. Dis-

putants cannot jointly agree on a shared frame since they

are not yet cooperating. One party to a dispute must thus

invent or adopt the frame and propose it to the other, who

(confronted with a new interpretation of the issue) agrees

to cooperate. But accounts of actual movements suggest

that these new frames are on-going interpretations that

emerge from activists’ interactions.

Thus, they emerge

from cooperation rather than facilitate it. If the frames are

in fact a symptom of cooperation rather than a cause, the

order in which events occur should reveal that relation-

ship; cooperation should precede the emergence of new

issue-frames.

Political opportunities, institutions,

and powerful states

In international affairs, the actions of powerful states deter-

mine many outcomes of political signiﬁcance.

The chang-

ing fortunes of transnational social movements may

therefore only reﬂect changes in the degree of support

they receive from powerful states. Relatedly, Georgia

Duerst-Lahti has argued that the U.S. women’s move-

ment was really a collection of fragmented local and regional

Articles

Inclusion, Solidarity, and Social Movements

58 Perspectives on Politics

movements until President Kennedy stimulated the estab-

lishment of a network of women’s commissions through-

out the United States.

By creating this network, the

government actually helped build the strong, indepen-

dent national women’s movement that is so active today.

Did governments or international organizations play a sim-

ilarly important role in facilitating cooperation among

activists on violence against women?

State institutions and international organizations can

play an important role in strengthening cooperation by

providing the opportunities and resources needed for dia-

logue. Intergovernmental meetings bring activists together

and provide a platform from which they can spread their

message. Governments and international organizations also

provide funding for organizing and research, which par-

ticularly facilitates the mobilization of economically dis-

advantaged groups. State or institutional support also

creates more favorable political opportunities.

Indeed,

movements can arise in response to new openings pro-

vided by political institutions.

However, such opportunities will not usually result in

activists cooperating across deep divisions. Many social

movements have squandered political opportunities by

being disorganized or divided among themselves. Win-

dows of opportunity are open only brieﬂy, and political

actors must be skilled and ready to act.

More resources

or opportunities enable activists and amplify their actions,

but do not generate any new solutions or ideas. So strong

state or institutional support may facilitate cooperation

but is not sufﬁcient to produce it.

Many feminist state theorists are skeptical of the eman-

cipatory potential of state support for women’s rights, wor-

rying that any such support co-opts key activists and blunts

the critical edge of feminist analysis.

These scholars would

anticipate that state support for women’s activism on vio-

lence would weaken the movement in the long run.

Does state support undermine, enable, or ensure coop-

eration? The causal story here depends on whether state

support precedes or coincides with the emergence of coop-

eration, or whether state support seems to contribute to

greater division. If state support seems to bring on greater

division or demobilization, we can conclude that feminist

skeptics are correct. If state support is present for a long

period and cooperation does not emerge, we can conclude

that state support is not sufﬁcient to produce cooperation.

Finally, if cooperation emerges soon after institutional sup-

port is put in place, and if key actors report that this

support was important, state support is likely to be a more

important part of the causal story.

The Global Movement against

Gender Violence

Which explanation best characterizes the process by which

the participants in the global movement against gender

violence overcame division to coordinate their actions?

Did recognition of common material interests spur activ-

ists to work together? Did activists respond when pre-

sented with a particular collective identity or issue frame?

Did they cooperate when presented with the political

opportunity to do so? Or did the development of inclu-

sivity make the difference?

The timeline of the move-

ment provides clues; violence against women was ﬁrmly

on the agenda of the transnational women’s movement by

the mid-1970s, but did not appear on the intergovern-

mental agenda until nearly a decade later. By then, at least

ﬁfteen national governments were taking measures to

address rape and woman-battering and some (including

powerful states like the U.S.) were pushing for inter-

national attention to violence against women. Yet these

efforts were resisted throughout the late 1980s, and the

most intense period of international policy development

on violence was the mid-1990s. Why did it take nearly

two-decades for governments to agree that wife-battering

should be a criminal act, or that rape was a violation of

women’s human rights? In this era, violence against women

was marginal even to those intergovernmental discussions

that focused on women’s status. Why did governments

ﬁnally agree to take collective measures to address vio-

lence against women in the 1990s? I argue that inter-

national activism against violence did not have a policy

impact earlier because activists could not overcome rela-

tions of inequality within the movement until they devel-

oped norms of inclusivity. The impact of material common

interests, issue-frames, identities, and the support of pow-

erful states all were contingent upon the movement’s devel-

oping these norms.

A sketch of the movement

Although women have long experienced and criticized rape,

wife abuse, and the like, it was not until the mid-1970s

that activists began using the term “violence against women”

in international discussions.

The issue was raised at the

First World Conference on Women in Mexico City in

1975 and at an independent meeting of activists in Brus-

sels the following year focused entirely on “crimes against

women”.

In spite of this growing awareness among activ-

ists, however, governments were silent on the issue of vio-

lence against women.

Activists at these early meetings were divided over what

the most important women’s issues were, how to deﬁne

these issues, how and whether activists ought to pursue

policy change, and how discussions ought to be orga-

nized. At the meeting in Mexico, divisions along these

lines partially mirrored the political conﬂicts in the broader

international system—the North-South conﬂict over how

to approach “development,” the cold war, the Israeli-

Palestinian conﬂict.

UN ofﬁcials reportedly worried about

how the disorder at the NGO Tribune in Mexico reﬂected

March 2006

Vol. 4/No. 1 59

on the UN.

Similarly, in spite of unifying theme of crimes

against women, the meeting in Brussels was also charac-

terized by conﬂict and considerable disarray.

Such con-

ﬂicts continued to disrupt the second world conference

on women and the parallel NGO forum in Copenhagen.

In the mid-eighties, activists sought to overcome these

divisions. Southern women developed independent fora

for discussing issues as women. The ﬁrst feminist Encuen-

tro in Bogota sparked a series of conferences among Latin

American feminists.

Similarly, African NGOs began to

organize separately, meeting in Senegal and Tanzania to

prepare for the Third World Conference on Women in

Nairobi. At the same time, women of color and Third

World women advanced arguments provoking a shift in

feminist organizational practice away from emphasizing

common experience towards addressing inequalities among

women.

These ideas likely inﬂuenced key activists from

the North and South.

Still, organizing across the North-South division con-

tinued to be a challenge, even at conferences focused on

violence against women or its speciﬁc forms. In 1983,

activists organized a Global Feminist Workshop to Orga-

nize Against Trafﬁc in Women in Rotterdam. But the con-

ference was beset with conﬂicts between North and South,

and plans to develop an international activist network were

derailed because Southern feminists did not want the net-

work based in the North, but did not have the resources

to host it themselves.

The turning point came in 1985 at the Third World

Conference on Women and the parallel NGO Forum in

Nairobi, Kenya, where activists made signiﬁcant headway.

The inclusion of violence against women as a priority in

the ﬁnal intergovernmental document, the Forward Look-

ing Strategies, solidly established the issue on the inter-

national agenda.

After Nairobi, activists were able to use

the Forward Looking Strategies to press the UN’s Commis-

sion on the Status of Women (CSW) to consider violence

against women.

In 1991 the UN’s CSW convened an Expert Group

Meeting on Violence Against Women in All its Forms in

Vienna.

At the same time, anti-violence activists were

developing a new global campaign. From 1990 to 1993,

the U.S.-based Campaign for Women’s Global Leadership

(CWGL) convened women from 20 (mostly Southern)

countries in Leadership Institutes.

At these institutes,

activists planned a three-year campaign linking women’s

and human rights, focusing on the UN Conference on

Human Rights in Vienna. Activists circulated a global

petition against gender violence, which was translated into

24 languages, sponsored by over a thousand groups, and

signed by nearly half a million people from 124 countries.

As a result, the issue of violence against women, previ-

ously thought of as a private issue of little relevance for

human rights organizations, dominated the 1993 World

Conference on Human Rights in Vienna.

CWGL orga-

nized a day-long Global Tribunal on Violations of Women’s

Human Rights, asked delegates to observe a minute of

silence for all women who had died or were badly injured

by domestic violence, and delivered the global petition to

the conference ﬂoor.

The Vienna Conference produced

the 1993 Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against

Women, the ﬁrst statement by a worldwide organization

that violence against women constituted a violation of

human rights.

The Declaration stated that

Gender-based violence and all forms of sexual harassment and

exploitation, including those resulting from cultural prejudice

and international trafﬁcking, are incompatible with the dignity

and worth of the human person, and must be eliminated.

Further, a Special Rapporteur on violence was appointed,

and work was begun on an optional protocol to Conven-

tion on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination

against Women CEDAW.

Gender-based violence continued to be a salient issue

at the NGO Forum accompanying the Fourth World Con-

ference on Women in Beijing in 1995.

In Beijing, gov-

ernments agreed to address violence against women as a

critical area of concern in the Platform for Action.

After-

wards, activists continued to work for improvements in

international agreements on violence against women and

international organizations expanded their response to vio-

lence.

Most importantly, in 1999 an Optional Protocol

to CEDAW, intended to give the Convention more pow-

ers of enforcement, was adopted. The Protocol permits

complaints to be made on behalf of individuals who have

exhausted remedies available in their countries. CEDAW

reviews the complaint, and at the end of a consultative

process renders a judgment. This may permit individuals

to obtain redress for human rights violations that their

governments are reluctant to address.

How did a movement initially unable to cooperate on

the issue of violence against women come to have such

tremendous coordination and policy inﬂuence?

It was

at Nairobi that activists were able to overcome division,

agree on recommendations for action, and put violence

against women on the international agenda for the ﬁrst

time.

What was different at Nairobi and afterwards?

Below, I argue that the development of norms of inclusiv-

ity in the global movement on gender violence was critical

for the movement’s success.

The development of norms of inclusivity

After the 1975 and 1980 World Conferences on women,

activists recognized that their divisions had severely weak-

ened them. Thus, women from both the North and the

South resolved to make ﬁnding some common ground a

priority. In addition, a broader shift in feminist organiza-

tional practice (partly inspired by critiques of women’s

movements by women of color and Third World women)

moved towards explicit, formal efforts to ensure effective

Articles

Inclusion, Solidarity, and Social Movements

60 Perspectives on Politics

representation of marginalized groups of women. These

efforts at inclusive deliberation facilitated cooperation

among activists. Speciﬁcally, activists sought to ensure that

Southern women were present, especially among the lead-

ership (descriptive representation), that Southern women

had the opportunity to articulate an independent agenda

(self-organization), and that activists worked to build an

agenda all could support, while expecting disagreement

about priorities (consensus with institutionalized dissent).

Descriptive representation. The Nairobi Forum was the ﬁrst

meeting in which Southern women constituted a major-

ity. The Mexico City and Copenhagen NGO Fora were

dominated by Western women. American women domi-

nated the Mexico City Forum and European women were

more than 70 percent of the attendees at Copenhagen.

Even the independent Tribunal on Crimes Against Women

in Brussels was organized and attended by women who

were mostly from developed countries: The organizers were

Northern women and more than 80 percent of the wit-

nesses giving testimony were from the North (table A1).

Why this change? After Copenhagen, activists began

taking explicit measures to ensure that women from South-

ern organizations were present in signiﬁcant numbers at

meetings to work out strategy and were part of the lead-

ership of the movement against violence. At Rotterdam,

for example, half of the countries represented were devel-

oping countries, although the forum was still lead by North-

ern women. This improved representation of women was

the result of conscious efforts by the organizers: Participa-

tion was by invitation only, and the organizers speciﬁcally

sought to achieve cultural diversity and regional bal-

ance.

By the Nairobi Forum two years later, 60 percent

of the participants were Southern women, partly because

of funding and other speciﬁc efforts to ensure such women

had access. The Leadership Institutes organized by CWGL

were explicitly aimed at helping to develop Southern

women’s leadership of the Global Campaign, and the par-

ticipants at these meetings were predominantly Southern.

The presence of Southern women in such large num-

bers among the attendees and as the leadership of the

NGO Forum at Nairobi and during the Global Cam-

paign in the early 1990s helped ensure that the perspec-

tives of Northern women did not dominate the agenda.

Symbolically, the numerical and leadership preponder-

ance of Southerners avoided the appearance of Northern-

ers telling Third World women what to do. Substantively,

the presence of so many Southern women made it possi-

ble for Southern women to organize their own workshops

and highlight issues they thought important.

Autonomous self-organization. During the 1980s, South-

ern women were organizing among themselves to address

violence against women. At the Bogota Encuentro in 1981

and the 1984 preparatory meeting of African NGOs in

Tanzania, women from developing countries themselves

emphasized the importance of violence against women in

their own terms. In addition, the creation of Develop-

ment Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN)

gave women in developing countries an organizational

mechanism to address violence against women on their

own terms.

When issues of sati (the ritual burning of a

widow on her husband’s funeral pyre), dowry deaths, and

female genital mutilation emerged from discussions among

Southern women, they were framed as instances of vio-

lence against women on the same level as domestic vio-

lence or rape, not as exotic practices signifying the primitive

nature of national cultures.

The CWGL leadership institutes used Northern re-

sources to bring Southern activists together to plot strat-

egy for a global campaign on women’s rights. In addition,

the CWGL consulted the grassroots of the women’s move-

ment as to what issues should be discussed at Beijing. The

strategies adopted built on ideas that originated in the

South. For example, the sixteen days of activism against

gender violence, launched in 1991 and observed by

women’s movements around the world to this day, began

with November 25, a day ﬁrst observed by Latin Ameri-

can feminists.

When women from every region of the world spoke of

their own experiences of violence, as they did at the

Tribunal organized by NGOs at Vienna, governments

had a more difﬁcult time denying that violence was a

widespread problem. Northern governments could not

maintain that violence was a problem only in so-called

“less civilized” countries, and Southern and Eastern coun-

tries had greater difﬁculty arguing that concern with vio-

lence was an issue cooked up by ethnocentric Western

feminists. When these issues were raised at regional pre-

paratory meetings entirely comprised of Southern repre-

sentatives, they could not be dismissed so easily.

Building consensus with institutionalized dissent. The Nai-

robi NGO meeting was distinguished from the earlier

meetings in Mexico City and Copenhagen by a “new

respect for diversity”.

Indeed, “a critical mass of women

had decided that they could be feminists and disagree on

certain issues.”

Many workshops expected no consensus

but aimed primarily at articulating different views or shar-

ing information. The Peace Tent expressed the approach

to discussion that dominated the conference. Opposing

groups were invited to debate issues publicly, but were

also encouraged to work to ﬁnd common ground. Coop-

erative efforts were not premised on the expectation of a

shared experience or natural agreement among women,

but rather on the idea that with some work, areas of agree-

ment among women could be identiﬁed.

These changed tactics were the result of changing norms

within the women’s movement. Indeed, the organizers of

these meetings speciﬁcally refer to their efforts to ensure

March 2006

Vol. 4/No. 1 61

descriptive representation for marginalized groups of

women and they intentionally worked to facilitate self-

organization by Southern women. These norms were man-

ifest both in the stated intentions of organizers and in

changes in their actual behavior.

These efforts at inclusivity bore considerable fruit. The

NGO forum at Nairobi was described as an “equalizing

experience.” One newspaper reported that “as everyone

who attended all three non-governmental decade meet-

ings seems to feel, only at Nairobi did Western women

depart from their previously dominating approach to

‘sharing’ information and resources with Third World

women.”

As a result of measures to give Southern women

a stronger voice, issues that had previously been very divi-

sive became unifying issues. When Northern women raised

the issue of FGM at earlier meetings, for example, many

Southern women criticized the move as imperialistic. But

at Nairobi, African women themselves organized discus-

sions of FGM and African women’s strategies to address

the issue. After Nairobi, activists were able to include FGM

under the rubric of violence against women with little

dissent.

Women’s ability to agree on important issues made it

easier for them to coordinate their actions and exert pres-

sure on governments to come to an agreement.

Because

they were able to cooperate on issues such as violence,

movement activists were better positioned to inﬂuence

the 1985 intergovernmental conference. Women’s organi-

zations pressed the U.S. representative to push for a more

difﬁcult but more inclusive decision-making procedure,

agreement by consensus instead of the usual two-thirds

rule (already a high standard). This forced both Northern

and Southern governments to consider each other’s posi-

tion more carefully, and work harder for consensus.

Political opportunities, institutions,

and state support

It seems clear that the broader political context (the end of

the Cold War, the series of UN conferences, etc.) contrib-

uted to the success of the movement against gender vio-

lence.

The series of UN Conferences provided a focus

and a forum for women organizing across national bor-

ders. Indeed, the movement against gender violence began

to crystallize after the ﬁrst UN Conference on Women in

Mexico City. Changing political conditions provided a

favorable context within which the movement on gender

violence could mount its claims.

Although this favorable context provided opportunities

for policy inﬂuence, the mere presence of the political

opportunity was not sufﬁcient to ensure that activists would

overcome the differences that divided them. If it were,

activists would have been able to agree on an approach to

the governmental conferences that preceded Nairobi.

Instead, division prevented activists from being more effec-

tive at both the Mexico and Copenhagen conferences. It

took a decade for activists to arrive at an approach to

organizing across borders that allowed them to cooperate

across the many lines of conﬂict inside the movement. So

although these political opportunities probably encour-

aged mobilization, opportunity itself was not sufﬁcient

for overcoming division.

After Nairobi, antiviolence activists were able to take

advantage of arising political opportunities, having suc-

cessfully developed agreement on a particular set of strat-

egies and policy goals. Support from governments and

international organizations was critical in providing

resources for the meetings that developed this unity. The

Canadian government, for example, supported a meeting

of experts that helped to develop the Inter-American Con-

vention on Violence Against Women. The strong support

of the U.S. government, especially after 1992, was impor-

tant in bringing other governments on board on women’s

rights issues more generally. In addition, United Nations

Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) underwrote

much of the work of the CWGL leading up to the Vienna

conference. The inclusion of women’s movement activists

in government delegations at the Vienna conference was

also important in the success both of NGO organizing

and intergovernmental negotiations. This provision of

resources and political support facilitated women’s inter-

national organizing and strengthened their efforts to inﬂu-

ence policy decisions.

However, although such support was an enabling fac-

tor, it was not sufﬁcient to produce cooperation and policy

inﬂuence. If government support were sufﬁcient to do so,

policy inﬂuence would have emerged much earlier. The

U.S. and Canadian governments had been ofﬁcially intro-

ducing resolutions on violence at every meeting of the

CSW between 1985 and 1990.

Women’s movement

activists had been present on a number of government

delegations at all the international meetings starting with

the 1975 Mexico City Conference. But major policy suc-

cesses in the area of violence against women did not mate-

rialize until 1993. The timing suggests that not until

Nairobi did women learn to communicate across their

differences, thus it was not until the late eighties and early

nineties that women could develop the frameworks and

strategies that they implemented with such success.

Common interests

Women had been discussing violence against women in

its various forms in international meetings in the ﬁrst half

of the twentieth century, but a global movement on gen-

der violence did not emerge until the late seventies, and

policy action did not emerge until the mid-1990s. A mere

conﬂuence of interests, which would have been constant

over this period, cannot on its own explain this variation

over time. Initially, activists were unable to perceive a shared

Articles

Inclusion, Solidarity, and Social Movements

62 Perspectives on Politics

agenda or common interest because other divisions

appeared more salient; not until the late 1980s and early

1990s did women perceive a common interest in the area

of violence against women.

Some might argue, nevertheless, that the continuing

underlying common interest ultimately permitted cooper-

ation when activists came to perceive their shared interest

in the mid-to-late eighties. But the perception of a com-

mon interest emerged from, rather than preceded, discus-

sions among activists of the North and South. Earlier efforts

to frame violence against women as a common interest

were unsuccessful. When activists sought to address the

issue of violence against women at Copenhagen and Rot-

terdam, they were unable to overcome North-South divi-

sions among women. Yet, after these meetings, norms of

inclusivity helped to defuse these North-South conﬂicts.

Because of these norms, more Southern women attended

and held leadership positions in the activist discussions

from the mid-1980s on. The broader framing of violence

against women that informed activism on violence in the

1990s emerged from these discussions. Only when activ-

ists could meet in a less conﬂictual, more inclusive setting

could they identify common areas of interest.

Collective identity

How important was the development of an identity as

“women” to the success of the international women’s move-

ment? Certainly, a process of developing or constructing a

sense of “we-ness” was an important part of the process of

overcoming differences. Kathleen Barry’s opening com-

ments at the Rotterdam conference stressed that violence

against women must be addressed subject to subject, rather

than subject to object.

This change in orientation among key Northern activ-

ists understandably improved their ability to communi-

cate with third world women. Still, this shift in orientation

on the part of some Northern women was not sufﬁcient,

in itself, to overcome the divisions. At the Rotterdam con-

ference, divisions between North and South continued to

frustrate cooperation even though the subject (trafﬁc in

women) would seem to be one that all women have an

interest in addressing. Moreover, although some partici-

pants were from developing countries, the conference was

led by Northern women.

Not until women from developing countries were able

to organize autonomously from women in the North,

did a spirit of cooperation become possible. At Nairobi,

women from the South led the conference, and raised

violence against women as an issue of interest to women

from both the North and the South. Third world women

described the Nairobi meeting as the ﬁrst time that West-

ern women participated without dominating.

although Northern women may have changed their view

of global feminism at Rotterdam, not until Nairobi did

all parties feel that they were on equal footing. At Nai-

robi, the participants emphasized coordinating action in

spite of fundamental differences: the search for a com-

mon identity or underlying experience was thoroughly

abandoned. Activists also established norms of inclusivity

that facilitated cooperation. This timing suggests that a

commitment to inclusive procedures, rather than the emer-

gence of a shared identity, contributed to success at Nai-

robi. A shared identity, approach, or experience may have

emerged from cooperation, but was not necessary to pro-

duce it.

Issue frames

Framing violence against women as a human rights issue

permitted activists to insert themselves into the political

process surrounding UN Conferences and to demand that

governments take notice of this important issue. But did

this framing also facilitate cooperation among women?

Keck and Sikkink argue that it did, altering the usual

North-South dynamic by placing all societies equally under

the human rights microscope.

Although the human rights frame may partially account

for the success of women’s movement advocates in the

mid-nineties, the idea of women’s rights as human rights

does not seem in practice to have acted as the basis for

overcoming divisions among women. Northern women’s

groups had pushed the notion of equality and human

rights for women since the beginning of the movement,

but because these rights tended to be viewed narrowly, as

excluding social and economic rights, Southern women

saw “rights-talk” as evading discussion of social and eco-

nomic issues. Indeed, although in 1975 governments urged

“women all over the world to unite to eliminate violations

of human rights,” no such united front of women emerged

for another decade.

Until activists worked to transform the concept in the

early 1990s, the human rights concept actually failed to

capture most of the forms of violence against women with

which activists were concerned.

Under this transforma-

tive work lay a broadened concept of “violence against

women” that included a wide range of problems from

poverty to female genital mutilation to rape. Although the

idea of violence against women as including a continuum

of violations from rape to mental harassment was dis-

cussed in transnational meetings from at least the mid-

1970s, the conclusion that the continuum included

violations of importance to Southern women (dowry

deaths, female genital mutilation, state terrorism) emerged

only from discussions among transnational activists in the

mid-1980s. Before that time, many Northern activists

tended to see these problems as representing particularly

backward or primitive cultures rather than just another

form of violence against women. Southern women argued

for the latter framing.

March 2006

Vol. 4/No. 1 63

When work on violence against women was ﬁrst

attempted as work on particular issues, such as female

genital mutilation, family violence, or sati, these separate

campaigns had limited success and tended to draw sup-

port mainly from women in the North. In the mid-1980s,

however, transnational activists began grouping diverse

issues under the rubric of violence against women. This

broader concept under-girded the later campaign to frame

violence as a human rights issue. But the broader concept

was the result of cooperation among women, rather than

the cause.

Norm violation: The example of the campaign

for women’s reproductive rights

Similar norms of inclusivity emerged in various sites of

women’s organizing in the mid-1980s.

But while norms

affect behavior, they do not determine it. Activists choose

whether to adhere to such norms or violate them. Activ-

ists may also adhere to norms for a variety of reasons,

including both the principled (for example, a commit-

ment to justice) and the pragmatic (for example, a realiza-

tion that adhering to norms advances other goals).

The

transnational movement for women’s reproductive rights,

which did not so consistently adopt norms of inclusivity,

suffered thereby. Initially, the elitist, policy-oriented wing

of the movement simply tried to exclude those who dis-

agreed with them, and they accordingly took no measures

to ensure that Southern women were well represented in

their deliberations. Yet these policy-oriented pragmatists

were unable to unify the movement around a policy pro-

gram. They eventually responded to criticism from South-

ern activists, organizing meetings that tried to be more

inclusive. In Rio de Janeiro in 1993, women’s health activ-

ists met with the goal of uniting women from the North

and South: “Organizers seemed especially sensitive to ensur-

ing diversity of participants and giving women from South-

ern countries an ample voice.”

The effort was successful,

with the Southern women reportedly taking the lead while

Northern women kept a lower proﬁle. At this ﬁve-day

conference, activists drafted a twenty-one point statement

in a process that was “remarkable for its democratic par-

ticipation and for building solidarity among diversity.”

The statement noted differences of opinion where they

existed rather than trying to force a consensus. This con-

ference “helped to produce cohesion in the movement”

and produced a “sense of solidarity” that was “especially

valuable for feminist lobbying efforts at the ﬁnal meet-

ing of the preparatory committee for the conference

Prepcom.”

At Cairo, however, the pragmatists returned to the strat-

egy of emphasizing their former elements of the agenda at

the expense of the development-related points. It is for this

reason that the ﬁnal Plan of Action is silent on development-

related issues. Divisions among women became increas-

ingly salient after the conference, probably weakening the

movement.

Their “pragmatic” moves to accommodate gov-

ernment agendas produced short-term policy success but

weakened the movement in the long term.

This analysis suggests that when mobilizing groups are

riven by relations of domination, inclusive procedures will

facilitate cooperation. When activists choose to ignore such

norms, trust and cooperation are undermined. When activ-

ists adhere to these norms, ensuring that marginalized

groups have a voice, these measures help to overcome sus-

picion, build trust, and ease communication.

If inclu-

sive procedures evolve into broader norms for decision-

making, activists can turn their attention to developing a

shared agenda and strategy rather than ﬁghting for recog-

nition from one another. Financial support from govern-

ments or international organizations can facilitate these

efforts, but is not likely to produce cooperation on its

own. Inclusive deliberations can produce, but do not

require, shared identities or interests. Inclusive delibera-

tions help to develop identities, interests, and issue frames

that a broader, more uniﬁed constituency of activists can

support, strengthening their movements and making them

better able to inﬂuence policy.

Conclusion

It is easy to forget that in the 1980s even mainstream

human rights groups and international law did not con-

sider rape, domestic violence, and other forms of violence

against women to be violations of human rights unless

they were perpetrated by the state. By the end of the 1990s,

many of these human rights groups had made violence

against women a priority area. More than 170 govern-

ments had signed a declaration against violence against

women, and women in more than 20 countries won the

right to seek redress for human rights violations in the

international community (through the Optional Protocol

to CEDAW).

In addition to formal legal rights, consid-

erable governmental and intergovernmental resources have

been dedicated to ﬁghting violence against women in both

developed and developing countries;

A UNIFEM ini-

tiative has funded anti-violence initiatives in more than

70 countries since 1997.

A strong, united movement on gender violence had a

major impact on bringing about these changes in civil

society and policy. This global movement was able to main-

tain cooperation by developing inclusive procedures for

intra-movement policy deliberations in which marginal-

ized participants had a greater voice. This procedure pro-

duced policy decisions and political strategies that more

members felt they could support. This put the movement

in a position to lobby for and take advantage of the

resources offered by governments and international

institutions—all of which eventually contributed to the

success in organizing and inﬂuencing policy.

Articles

Inclusion, Solidarity, and Social Movements

64 Perspectives on Politics

Previous studies have suggested that strategic issue-

framing and the political opportunity structure accounted

for the success of the movement against gender violence.

But the opportunity structure, while important, pro-

vides an incomplete account of the development of the

movement. The successful framing of violence against

women as a human rights issue, which did contribute

to the movement’s success in inﬂuencing policy, resulted

from cooperation among women rather than caused

it. The emergence of norms of inclusivity among activ-

ists plays a major causal role in this process, allowing

bitterly divided activists to come together to forge an

inﬂuential transnational movement. Those seeking to

develop cooperation probably can further this goal by

adopting more inclusive decision-making procedures with-

out worrying that movement adherents share no com-

mon identity.

More generally, this study suggests that our understand-

ing of these phenomena is improved by attending to the

context of structural inequality in which social move-

ments operate. In this case, attending to power dynamics

illuminates a previously overlooked path to cooperation.

Norms of inclusivity proved important by helping to mit-

igate the divisions arising from relations of domination,

divisions that challenge, even paralyze, many contempo-

rary social movements.

Social movements comprise critical avenues of policy

inﬂuence for women and other marginalized groups.

When movements are weak and fragmented, those groups

lose their most effective means of inﬂuencing the public

policy process. When inclusive norms allow movements

to maintain solidarity and policy inﬂuence, those move-

ments can articulate and advocate better for marginalized

and politically excluded interests.

Table A1

Norms of Inclusivity, Movement Actions, and Policy Outcomes 1970–1998

Descriptive Representation

of Southern Women

Year

and

Event Leadership Participants

Self-Organization

of Southern

women

Structure of

Deliberations:

Consensus with

Institutionalized

Dissent

Movement

Actions

on VAW*

Governmental/

Intergovernmental

Response

to VAW

1975

Mexico

Tribune

(Planning committee)

Northern

5,000–6,000, majority

from US and Mexico

No measures to

ensure Southern

presence

No separate organi-

zation of Southern

women

Formal program

addresses govern-

ment agenda

Consciousness raising

(C-R) model for other

discussions**

No specific actions. A few individual

governments (e.g.,

Australia) make

statements on

violence; VAW is not

on intergovernmental

agenda

1976

Brussels

Northern 2000 women; Mostly

Northern; 13/108

(12%) of those giving

testimony are

Southern

No separate organi-

zation of Southern

women.

Anarchic organizational

form (after first day).

C-R model.

Many sessions

focused on gender

violence

No governments

in attendance

Support from some

governments

1980

Copenhagen

Forum

Northern 8,000; 68% European No separate organi-

zation of Southern

women

C-R model (e.g.,

Vivencia! Space)

Sessions on sex

slavery, traffic in

women, and sex

tourism

Discussion of domestic

violence, sexual

abuse, and FGM

Ratification of CEDAW

(includes no mention

of violence); FGM on

international agenda

First explicit mention of

“violence against

women.”

1981

Bogota

Encuentro

Southern organizers. More than 200; about

92% Southern.

Conference constitutes

self-organization of

Latin American

women

Informal workshops

Final plenary session

hears reports from

smaller sessions,

adopts resolutions

VAW not on official

agenda

Resolution to end

VAW, declare Day

against VAW

(Nov. 25)

—

1983

Meeting on

Traffic in

Women,

Rotterdam

Organizers are

Northern; int’l.

advisory group

provides input from

third world women

54% Southern;

Concrete efforts to

develop regional

balance

No separate self-

organization of

Southern women,

some independent

organization by

region begins

Networking approach

Invitation-only work-

shop aimed at

developing “action-

able knowledge,” not

agreement

Publication of report

on female sexual

slavery (1984)

Plans to work at

organizing groups at

local and regional

level and to review

progress at Nairobi

—

1983

Lima

Encuentro

——Encuentro constitutes

self-organization by

Southern women

Formal workshop

structure; facilitators

and paper givers; one

workshop on racism.

Many spontaneous

workshops; wide-

spread dissatisfaction

with structure

VAW subject of one of

19 workshops

—

(continued)

March 2006

Vol. 4/No. 1 65

Notes

1 Weldon 2002, chap. 3.

2 Gitlin 1995; Tarrow 1998; Snow and McAdam

2000; Echols 1989; Beckwith 2000.

3 The past ﬁve years in the United States have seen

an erosion of women’s reproductive rights, govern-

ment response to violence against women, and

women’s ability to combat poverty. Speciﬁcally, the cur-

rent administration has presided over the closure

of the Violence Against Women Ofﬁce, the reinstate-

ment of the Mexico City rule (also known as the

Global Gag rule), the so-called Partial Birth Abor-

tion ban, and the weakening of Title IX, to name

just a few of the initiatives. Current proposals aim to

Table A1 Continued

Descriptive Representation

of Southern Women

Year

and

Event Leadership Participants

Self-Organization

of Southern

women

Structure of

Deliberations:

Consensus with

Institutionalized

Dissent

Movement

Actions

on VAW*

Governmental/

Intergovernmental

Response

to VAW

1984

Prep for

Nairobi

Southern Regionally comprised Independent,

organiza tions,meetings

of Southern women

(DAWN, WILDAF,

Arusha)

No information Arusha statement

on VAW

—

1985

Nairobi

Forum

Southern organizers

and convenors

Predominantly

South ern (60% of

13,504

registrants)

Concrete efforts

(includ ing funding) to

ensure presence of

Southern women at

conference

DAWN workshops;

African-organized

workshops on FGM

and other topics

Focus on action in

context of dissent

Peace Tent

VAW is the subject of

nearly a third of the

100 NGO workshops

Establishment of

women’s rights net

works (IWRAW:

CLADEM; APWLD;

WiLDAF)

Inclusion of the issue

ofVAWasapriority

in the final document

solidly established

VAW as an issue on

the international

agenda

1990

San

Bernardo

Encuentro

More than 5,000

women attended;

organized by

Southern women

More than 5,000

women attended

Encuentro constitutes

Southern

self- organization

Organization of

les bian, working

class, and women of

color expands

C-R form overwhelmed

by large, diverse

group; chaos prevails

Controversy in

Ber tioga and Taxco

over accessibility for

poor, working class

women

Founding of Latin

American and

Carib bean Network

against Sexual and

Domestic Violence

5,000 women march

through Buenos Aires

on final day (Nov. 25)

to protest VAW

—

1991

1992

CWGL

Leadership

Institutes

CWGL Center staff

with International

Advisory Committee

select participants

First:

23; 65% Southern

Second:

20; 85% Southern

Both Institutes:

Outreach focuses on

South; Center staff

with International

Advisory Committee

select participants

Institutes aimed at

facilitat ing and

supporting

self- organization of

Southern women

Focus on developing

strategies for action

Private and public

meetings

Areas of agreement

identified

Launching of 16 Days

of Activism; Petition

campaign.

Planning for Vienna

Discussion of VAW;

broadening of idea of

women’s human

rights

CSW convenes Expert

Group Meeting on

Violence Against

Women in All Its

Forms (Vienna)

VAW raised in

prepara tory

conferences in North

and South (as part of

strategy devel oped at

leadership institutes)

1993

Vienna

Southern delegation to

Geneva Prep. Comm.

International

Coordinat ing

Committee (mostly

Southern) selects 33

speakers for Tribunal

83% of testimonials

are by Southern

women

Region, race, ethnicity,

class, sexual

orienta tion and ability

also

represented.

Regional preparatory

confer ences in North

and South and

increased

organiza tion of

African women

(FEMNET; Akina

Mama wa Afrika; La

Nuestra, WiLDAF)

NGO Forum works

on producing one

document

Working groups

focused on particular

topics

Women’s caucus at

Geneva and Vienna

included women from

North and South

Prior to conference,

activists held global

campaign activities

all over the world

Women presented a

united front at

Geneva

At Vienna—Tribunal;

Delivery of Petition;

lobbying

UNIFEM sponsors

South ern delegation

to Geneva

1993 Declaration on

the Elimination of

Violence Against

Women

Special Rapporteur on

violence appointed

Work is begun on an

optional protocol to

CEDAW.

1995

Beijing—

NGO Forum

at Huairou

— 25,000 to 30,000;

60% Southern

Scholarships for poor

and working class

women wanting to

attend

Regional tents and

“diversity tents”

NGO caucuses for

regions, topics and

groups of women

(women of color,

lesbians, youth, etc.)

Women’s linkage

cau cus (umbrella

caucus linking all the

other groups)

Brought documents

from preparatory

meetings originally

derived from regional

meetings

VAW identified as a

critical area for

concern

20 events per day

on VAW

Well-attended protests

Global Tribunal

Sixteen Days

promoted

Demand for Optional

Protocol

Governments agreed

to include VAW as a

critical area of

con cern in the

Platform for Action

Optional Protocol to

CEDAW was adopted

in 1999

*VAW is an abbreviation for Violence against Women.

**Consciousness-raising (C-R) model refers to measures such as confidentiality, emphasis on testimonials of first-hand experiences of women, emphasis on spontaneity as

opposed to a planned program or agenda.

Sources: Bunch and Reilly 1994; Barry, Bunch, and Castley 1984; Fraser 1987; Joachim 1999, 2003; Riddell-Dixon 2001; Russell and VandeVen 1976; Sternbach et al. 1992;

Thompson 2002; Tripp 2003, 2004.

Articles

Inclusion, Solidarity, and Social Movements

66 Perspectives on Politics

increase work requirements on welfare recipients, tie

social security beneﬁts to gender and to eliminate

some important government data gathering on

women’s employment. Some of these measures

have signiﬁcant international ramiﬁcations (e.g, the

global gag rule); Center for Reproductive Rights

2003, Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI) 2004. In addi-

tion, a recent effort to get the U.S. government to

ratify CEDAW failed. Poverty is also a current and

growing concern for women around the world

(United Nations 1995 and 2003).

4 Gitlin 1995.

5 Rupp and Taylor 1999.

6 Other examples include the transnational social

movements against sweatshops and globalization. In

addition, Davis 1998 cites the example of women of

color in the United States working across differences

to form a women’s health alliance. Blofeld 2003

argues that women in Spain were able to overcome

class equality to a greater degree than were women

activists in Chile.

7 Note that this comparison over time means that this

study involves many observations (more than 25

years’ worth) and so is not based on a single ob-

servation (King, Keohane, and Verba 1994,

221).

8 Like most cases (Ragin and Becker 1992), the “case”

of women’s transnational organizing on violence is

embedded in larger entities (transnational women’s

organizing, global civil society, women’s organizing

in general). Delineating boundaries can at times be

tricky. When is an event part of the story of the

movement against violence, part of the women’s

movement more generally, or part of the story of the

development of global civil society? Although these

boundaries are fuzzy, the networks of activists and

key events that are important for the issue of vio-

lence against women can for the most part be distin-

guished from the activists and events that worked on

other issues, such as reproductive rights or global

labor justice. So while there is some overlap, we can

discern a distinct grouping of events and activists

related to this policy issue.

9 Keck and Sikkink 1998; Joachim 1999; Joachim

2003. It should be noted that although the issue of

overcoming division in the movement is dealt with

in these accounts, it is not in itself the central ques-

tion they address.

10 Here I trace the process by which cooperation un-

folds to see which theoretical account best captures

the dynamics I see, using traditional case study

techniques of “process-tracing” and “pattern match-

ing.” Process-tracing, or identifying causal chains of

events, is particularly well-suited to “ﬁnding plausi-

ble hypotheses about causal mechanisms” (King,

Keohane and Verba 1994, 228, 226–27; see also

Collier and Mahoney 1996, 73–74; George 1979;

George and McKeown 1985; for further discussion

of the “plausibility probe” function of case studies,

see Eckstein, 1975; Peters 1998, 150). Pattern

matching is a procedure whereby counterfactuals

implied by rival theories are compared and

contrasted with actually occurring events (Yin 1994

106–10; compare King, Keohane, and Verba 1994,

78). Applying multiple theories to a single case is

rarely sufﬁciently convincing in itself to result in the

rejection of an accepted theory, but where it can

provide evidence that a theoretical innovation offers

a concrete payoff, it can offer powerful support for

efforts to build new theories.

11 In deﬁning relations of domination, I follow Young

(2000, 32): “Persons live within structures of domi-

nation if other persons or groups can determine

without reciprocation the conditions of their

actions.”

12 Habermas 1987; Young 2000.

13 I follow Williams (1998) here in deﬁning marginal-

ized groups as those groups for which social and

political inequality is structured along the lines of

group membership, for which group membership is

not experienced as voluntary or mutable, and for

which negative meanings are assigned to group

identity (p. 16).

14 On the relationship between group inequality, mis-

trust, and deliberation, see Williams 1998 and

Mansbridge 1999. On social movement fragmenta-

tion and decline see Gitlin 1995; Tarrow 1998;

Taylor and Whittier 1999; Echols 1989; Snow and

McAdam 2000.

15 Young 2000 deﬁnes inclusion as “the degree to

which those affected by [a decision] have been in-

cluded in the decision making processes and have

had the opportunity to inﬂuence the outcomes” and

argues that “systems of representation are most

inclusive . . . when they encourage the particular

perspectives of relatively marginalized or disadvan-

taged social groups to receive speciﬁc expression.”

(5–6, 8). Also see Habermas 1987.

16 Hoffman 2005, especially chap. 3.

17 Elman 1996; Molyneux 1998; Weldon 2002.

18 Fraser 1992; Fraser 1995; Young 2000.

19 Fraser 1992, 123–24

20 Williams 1998; Young 2000; Mansbridge 1999.

21 Mansbridge 1980; Young 1990, 2002; Williams

1998.

22 Young 2000, 44.

23 Krasner 1983, 2; Finnemore and Sikkink 1998, 891.

See also Klotz 1995.

24 Clark 2001, 30.

25 O’Brien et al. 2000, 40.

March 2006

Vol. 4/No. 1 67

26 O’Brien et al. 2000, 40. In this paper I follow the

convention of employing the term “North” or

“Global North” to refer to advanced industrial states

(especially those in Western Europe and North

America), while “South” or “Global South” is used

to refer to developing countries.

27 Butler 1990; Epstein and Straub 1995; Hooks 1981;

Hooks 2000; Nicholson 1990; Spelman 1988.

28 Practically, the difference between actual interests

and the perceptions or construction of interests may

seem slight, since it is a group’s understanding of

these interests in a particular case that matters for

explaining behavior. But theoretically, this issue is a

critical one since it reﬂects the difference between a

fundamentally materialist approach (material factors

are the most fundamental) and a fundamentally

idealist approach (ideas or norms are the most fun-

damental) to analyzing politics. This is a major

theoretical debate that has been particularly salient

in discussions of international politics. Constructiv-

ists have argued that interests must be understood as

constructed, that is, as largely constituted by the

norms and linguistic and cultural practices that

comprise the social context. Wendt 1999. See also

Risse-Kappen 1994.

29 Rupp and Taylor 1999.

30 Marx 1998; Rupp and Taylor 1999; Tarrow 1998.

31 Rupp and Taylor 1999, 365.

32 Tarrow 1998.

33 Keck and Sikkink 1998, 22.

34 For an excellent review and discussion of the litera-

ture on collective action frames, see Benford and

Snow 2000.

35 Waltz 1979; Krasner, 1976; Morgenthau 1967.

36 Duerst-Lahti 1989.

37 MacAdam et al. 1996. External threats can change

the salience of different issues or afﬁliations. Marx

1998 argues that the establishment of Jim Crow

laws in the American south made race more salient

there, and facilitated mobilization among African

Americans although there were many differences

among them. But such external events are not neces-

sary to overcome these internal divisions, and may

not be sufﬁcient for doing so.

38 Kingdon 1984.

39 Many feminist scholars see the state or bureaucracy

in general as inimical to feminist concerns. See

Brown 1979; Brown 1992; Busch 1992; Daniels

1997; Ferguson 1984; Fraser 1989; MacKinnon

1989; Abramovitz 1988; Borchorst and Siim 1987;

Elshtain 1981; Stivers 1993; Walker 1990. For

critiques of this view see Gordon 1990; Skocpol

1992; Brush 1994.

40 O’Brien et al. (2000) deﬁne a global social move-

ment as “groups of people around the world work-

ing on the transworld plane pursuing far reaching

social change” (13; see also 12–16).

41 Brownmiller 1975; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Weldon

2002. Discussions of sexual violence in the inter-

national women’s movementdate to early 1900s; indeed,

rape in war and in peacetime was presented by fem-

inist activists as one of the reasons women should orga-

nize internationally (Rupp and Taylor 1999, 378).

42 On the Mexico City meeting see Statement by Ms.

Elizabeth Reid, Leader of the Australian Delegation

(excerpts) Women’s International Network News 1 (1)

October 1975 p. 5. On the Brussels conference see

Russell and Van de Ven 1976. In 1974, ISIS, an

international feminist network focusing on violence

against women, was formed (Fraser 1987). In 1975,

Fran Hoskin presented an argument in Women’s

International News (WIN) that domestic violence

was a pressing international issue. See also Joachim

1999.

43 Fraser 1987.

44 Fraser 1987.

45 Russell and Van de Ven 1976.

46 Keck and Sikkink 1998.

47 Sternbach et al. 1992.

48 Burnham 2001; Crenshaw 1994; Davis 1998;

Hooks 1981; Hooks 2000.

49 See Burnham 2001 and Nguyen 2001. Early reports

on transnational organizing by anti-violence activists

use the term “double” oppression to refer to the

situation of women in marginalized sub-groups

(immigrant women, third world women, women of

religious minority groups. See, for example, Russell

and Van de Ven 1984 [1976], while later reports

emphasize “intersectionality” and “diversity” in

discussing the differences among women (CWGL

1991). This use of language drawn directly from

feminist theories advanced by women of color sug-

gests that key organizers like Charlotte Bunch were

inﬂuenced by the work of women of color. It should

be noted that concern about representativeness and

divisions among women was not only occurring in

Northern feminism. As Sternbach et al. report, Latin

American feminists were also wrestling with divi-

sions of class, race, and the like in their independent

feminist organizing.

50 Keck and Sikkink 1998. Barry, Bunch, and Castley

1984 do not mention any serious conﬂicts between

Northern and Southern women in their report on

the conference, mentioning only that there was a

straightforward discussion of the issues that have

divided First and Third world women.

51 In the ﬁnal document, governments are exhorted to

pay special attention to abused women, among

others (paragraph 41), and gender-speciﬁc violence

is identiﬁed as a priority (United Nations 1985,

Articles

Inclusion, Solidarity, and Social Movements

68 Perspectives on Politics

paragraph 288). Speciﬁc measures to address vio-

lence are also recommended as actions to be taken in

the area of social services (paragraph 231).

52 Joachim 1999; Keck and Sikkink 1998.

53 Center for Women’s Global Leadership 1991; Cen-

ter for Women’s Global Leadership 1992–93; Bunch

and Reilly 1994; Joachim 1999; Keck and Sikkink

1998.

54 Keck and Sikkink 1998; Joachim 1999; Cooper

1999; Friedman 1995. Prevailing human rights

discourse restricted human rights work to violations

by state agencies, and did not include actions by

private individuals or actions taken in private. Also,

there was the perception that violence against

women occurred in isolated and discrete occur-

rences, and was not a phenomenon of sufﬁcient

signiﬁcance, persistence and prevalence to require

human rights work (Keck and Sikkink 1998).

55 Friedman 1995; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Joachim

1999; Tinker 1999; Bunch and Reilly 1994.

56 Although international conventions (such as the

Geneva Convention) recognized wartime rape as a

crime, these documents characterized rape as an

attack against honor or dignity and not as torture or

inhumane treatment causing great suffering or as

causing serious injury to body or health (UN Agent

1998).

57 The Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action,

adopted at the World Conference on Human

Rights, held at Vienna from June 14–25, 1993.

58 There were typically about 20 events each day focus-

ing on violence against women, and protests against

violence attracted hundreds of participants (Thomp-

son 2002, 111).

59 Cooper 1999; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Joachim

1999.

60 In 1998 UNIFEM launched campaigns against

gender violence in Latin America and the Carib-

bean, Africa and Asia; UNDP claimed that it had

allocated 20 percent of its resources for anti-violence

campaigns; and the UN’s Social, Humanitarian and

Cultural Committee adopted a resolution designat-

ing November 25 as International Day for the Elim-

ination of Violence (UNIFEM 1999; Fong 1999;

Nzwili 1998; Xinhua News Agency). In 1999

UNIFEM held a global videoconference on violence

against women, including domestic violence, rape,

and female genital mutilation (Nzwili 1998; Deen

1999; UNIFEM 1999).

61 United Nations 1999. The global movement against

gender violence continues. In 1999, the Coalition

Against Trafﬁcking in Women, organized a three-day

conference on Sexual Exploitation in Bangladesh.

The World March for Women 2000, involving

5,000 organizations in 157 countries, demanded

that the UN and world governments focus on both

poverty and violence (Toronto Star, October 7, 2000;

Ottawa Sun, October 16, 2000).

62 This is not to suggest that there are no longer any

serious conﬂicts between women in the movement.

Rather, the point is that cooperation and solidarity

have been maintained in the face of such conﬂicts.

Moreover, building solidarity is an on-going process

that is never “ﬁnished” from the perspective of the

larger movement.

63 Keck and Sikkink 1998; Joachim 1999; Friedman

1995.

64 Barry et al. 1984, 11.

65 It is worth noting that this shift cannot be entirely

attributed to changing alignments in the UN that

produced greater representation of Southern women.

First, activists made explicit efforts to ensure repre-

sentativeness on more grounds than just the North-

South division (including sexuality, sexual

orientation, region, and so forth). This broader

concern with representativeness reﬂects a more

general trend in women’s organizing that is evident

in other contexts around the same time. Second,

these changes were evident in meetings unconnected

to the UN, such as the Rotterdam meeting in the

early 1980s. Third, the timing and impact of chang-

ing alignments does not map well onto the patterns

of changing representation for Southern women.

The two big shifts in alignment that might have

affected general norms about Southern representa-

tion were (1) the formation of the Group of 77 and

efforts to organize developing countries into a voting

bloc in 1973 lasting until 1988 or so and (2) the

shift from a cold war (East-West) alignment to more

of a North-South alignment in the early 1990s after

the fall of the Berlin Wall. But as table A-1 suggests,

the big change in women’s representation began in

the mid-1980s (leading up to and including Nai-

robi) and continued into the early 1990s (with the

CWGL Leadership Institutes). This is too early for

the end of the cold war to make a difference, and

too late for the formation of the Group of 77 to

have had a clear impact. (The impact of the Group

of 77 was waning by the late 1980s.) See also Voeten

2000], who argues, based on analysis of voting

patterns in the UN, that the shift away from east-

west divisions did not actually occur.

66 Tinker 1999.

67 Ngara 1985; Kishwar and Vanita 1984; Narayan

1997.

68 Fraser 1987, 210.

69 Fraser 1987, 210.

70 Fraser 1987, 210, 213–15.

71 Chew 1985.

72 Ngara 1985.

March 2006

Vol. 4/No. 1 69

73 Chew 1985; Joachim 1999.

74 Sharma 1985a; Faul 1985, July 24; Gray 1985a. The

United States made some important concessions in

its opening speech as a signal that the administration

was serious about building consensus. These conces-

sions, especially the speciﬁc recognition of the Pales-

tinian issue, may have been part of the reason that

the Palestinian delegation agreed to the solution

proposed by the Kenyan delegation, to substitute the

wording regarding all forms of racism for wording

that speciﬁcally singled out Zionism. It was also

important that the host Kenyan delegation, a South-

ern country and one of the Group of 77, proposed

the solution (Chew 1985).

75 Joachim 1999.

76 Ibid.

77 Kathleen Barry in Keck and Sikkink 1998.

78 Chew 1985; Ngara 1985.

79 Hooks (2000, 31) makes a similar point when she

argues that one way of addressing the problems

posed by women’s differing deﬁnitions, experiences,

and relationships to the concept of feminism is to

avoid using the phrase “I am a feminist” and to say

instead “I advocate feminism.” Thanks to Anna

Nelson for reminding me of this point.

80 Keck and Sikkink 1998.

81 United Nations 1975b, paragraph 28.

82 Bunch’s inﬂuential article arguing that women’s

rights are human rights appeared in Human Rights

Quarterly in 1990, and Carrillo’s article arguing that

Violence Against Women was an obstacle to devel-

opment was published by UNIFEM in 1992.

83 See, for example, Kishwar and Vanita 1984 and

Davis 1984.

84 Accounts of women’s organizing in Canada, the

United States, Australia, and Latin America note the

emergence of organizations and caucuses devoted to

particular sub-groups of women (such as women of

color), concern with ensuring access and representa-

tion by these groups, as well as solidarity among

women in spite of differences and inequalities

among them (Burnham 2001; Combahee River

Collective Statement 1977; Davis 1998; Weldon

2002; Matthews 1993; Minkoff 1997; Sternbach

et al. 1992; Sawer 1995).

85 Keck and Sikkink 1998 point out that it is possible

for activists to be both principled and strategic.

Adherence to norms need not be naïve or purely

idealistic.

86 Higer 1999, 134.

87 Higer 1999, 134.

88 Ibid., 135.

89 Ibid.

90 Ibid., 139.

91 Hoffman 2005; Williams 1998.

92 Joachim 1999; for the text of the Optional Protocol

to CEDAW see United Nations (1999), or see the

extensive webpage provided by the Division for the

Advancement of Women (DAW) at the UN, which

includes the text of the protocol and other helpful

information (United Nations 2004).

93 Weldon 2002.

94 Heyzer 2003.

95 Rochon and Mazmanian 1993; Bystydzienski and

Sekhon 1999; Costain and McFarland 1998; Dryzek

1990; Piven and Cloward 1993; Marx 1998; Wel-

don 2002.

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