Transnational Links: South Asian American Women's Organizations and Autonomous Women's Groups in India

This chapter considers appearances by women’s organizations at US congressional hearings from 1920 to 2000. By three measures—the number of times women’s groups testified, the number of women’s organizations that appeared, and the breadth of issues to which the groups spoke—these groups’ policy engagement expanded in the four decades after suffrage. Women’s engagement then declined after the second-wave women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The chapter evaluates promising yet ultimately unsatisfying explanations for this inverted-U pattern and then lays out an account centered on public policy’s role. Specifically, federal gender policies provided resources that helped structure and direct the representation of women’s interests. For the first two-thirds of the twentieth century, interests surrounded women’s group rights and civic responsibility; for the last third of the century, the focus was on group rights almost exclusively. This evolution influenced women’s collective voice in American democracy and the range of issues on which women were heard.

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Peace and Beyond: Women's Activist Alliances under Turkey's “Regime of Emergency”1

Critical Times ◽

10.1215/26410478-1.1.149 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 1 (1) ◽

pp. 149-157

Author(s):

Nisa Göksel

Keyword(s):

Women Activists ◽

Peace Process ◽

Women's Organizations ◽

Authoritarian Regime ◽

Women's Movements ◽

Women's Groups ◽

Women’S Groups ◽

Women’S Organizations

Abstract This essay begins with the formation of solidarities among women's movements in Turkey during the period of the peace process. It focuses on events that took place between March 8, 2013, the beginning of the peace process, and March 8, 2017, when women activists in Turkey joined the International Women's Strike. Despite the collapse of the peace process and the resumption of war in the summer of 2015, women activists continued to struggle under the Turkish government's emergency regime. This essay addresses the ways in which the peace process and its termination affected relations among activist women, both Kurdish and non-Kurdish, as they have sought to confront Turkey's “new” emergency regime. Many women's groups lost their institutional footing due to the emergency regime's forced closure of women's organizations and its arrest of numerous activists, parliamentarians, and co-mayors. In this context, the essay demonstrates, women are left with no choice but to strengthen their alliances and to radicalize their movements against the state's authoritarian regime.

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Lobbying Beyond the Legislature: Challenges and Biases in Women's Organizations’ Participation in Rulemaking

Politics & Gender ◽

10.1017/s1743923x21000350 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-35

Author(s):

Ashley English

Keyword(s):

Interest Groups ◽

Low Cost ◽

Women's Organizations ◽

Economic Interest ◽

Women's Groups ◽

Staff Members ◽

Women’S Groups ◽

Marginalized Women ◽

Economic Interest Groups ◽

Women’S Organizations

Abstract This study, which is based on a survey of women's organizations’ staff members, answers two previously unexamined questions about women's groups’ participation in the rulemaking process: (1) How do women's organizations participate? (2) What are the characteristics of the women's organizations that are the most likely to participate? About one-quarter (27%) of women's organizations reported that they lobby rulemakers, often using relatively low-cost methods, such as submitting comments or signing on to comments written by coalitions or like-minded groups. Women's organizations with large staffs that are structured the most like political insiders or influential economic interest groups were the most likely to participate in the process, potentially biasing participation in favor of relatively advantaged subgroups of women. Together, these results suggest that although rulemaking presents unique opportunities to represent women, the most marginalized women may be underrepresented during rulemaking debates.

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