Towards Strategic Sisterhood on Balanced Terms: Recognition, Participation, Inclusion and Solidarity

Abstract

‘The women’s movement’ has never been a unified movement, be it at transnational, national, regional or local levels of mobilisation and activism, as women’s interests have diverged and women have mobilised within different groups and organisations emphasising a plethora of issues, strategies and claims. The diversity of women’s movements offers women of various backgrounds and locations a sense of belonging as well as political representation through the advocacy and claims-making forwarded by such movements. Diversity and disunity have always been present in women’s movements, and will continue to characterise women’s movements that are taking shape within increasingly complex, multicultural European constituencies. However, the specific features of women’s movements’ disunity, in relation to both its focus and significance, change over time. Despite ideological divisions and political tensions within women’s movements, there has also been considerable agreement on central political demands emerging from women’s movement activism. Many of the core issues that dominated in the 1970s and 1980s, such as equal pay, the availability of affordable, quality child care, maternity and paternity leave, abortion access, freedom from gender-based violence and freedom from racism and discrimination, continue to be put forward by contemporary women’s movement organisations.