Women Rally for Action 1976: Politically Engaged Feminism in British Columbia

This article situates a 1976 feminist rally in Victoria, British Columbia, Women Rally for Action, within the context of Canada’s national feminist movement. The rally was a legislative lobbying event aimed at the newly elected Social Credit government and their cuts to the social services that supported gender equality in the province. By tracing the development of the second wave feminist movement in Canada and in BC, this article explores how the organizers of the BC rally employed a national feminist strategy of organized political pressure. In doing so, they worked towards the politicization of the women’s movement on a national and provincial level, and developed an invaluable framework for future women’s organizing in BC.

The Relational Dynamics of Becoming Popular Feminist Subjects: The World March of Women and Rural/Peasant Women’s Organizing in Brazil in the 2000s

The constitution and consolidation of rural and peasant women as popular feminist subjects in Brazil are the result not only of processes internal to these constituencies but also of relational dynamics involving cross-class and cross-movement popular activist organizations. Since the end of the 1990s, organizations and activists identifying with the World March of Women in western Rio Grande do Norte and at the national scale have consciously engaged with rural and peasant women and assisted them in becoming and consolidating themselves as popular feminist subjects. Relational dynamics have also been important in the (unfinished) process of transforming, extending, and deepening the dual meaning of “popular feminism” in Brazil. A constituição e consolidação das mulheres rurais e camponesas como sujeitos feministas populares no Brasil são o resultado não apenas de processos internos desses grupos, mas também das dinâmicas relacionais que envolvem organizações ativistas populares de classes e movimentos. Desde o final da década de 1990, organizações e ativistas que se identificam com a Marcha Mundial das Mulheres da região Oeste do Rio Grande do Norte e em escala nacional têm se engajado conscientemente com as mulheres rurais e camponesas, ajudando as mesmas a se tornarem e consolidarem como sujeitos feministas populares. As dinâmicas relacionais têm sido importantes também no processo (incompleto) de transformação, extensão e aprofundamento do duplo significado de “feminismo popular” no Brasil.

Mobilized Yet Contained: Popular Women, Feminisms, and Organizing around Venezuela’s 2012 Organic Labor Law

Venezuela’s state-led national-popular Bolivarian process opened up a new political field for feminism—an approach that was both institutional and popular, aiming to combine forces from above and from below and use state gender institutions to foment popular women’s organization. Yet this field was conflictual, containing contesting popular feminist projects with different implications for the gendered division of labor. Analysis of popular women’s organizing around Venezuela’s 2012 organic labor law shows that state adoption of feminism marked a gendered political opening for popularizing feminism while also presenting risks of state co-optation of popular women’s organizing. The state understood popular women’s organization and mobilization as central to the revolution, yet it generally attempted to limit their autonomy and organizing to challenge the gendered division of labor. El bolivarianismo nacional-popular liderado por el estado venezolano abrió un nuevo campo político para el feminismo: un enfoque que era tanto institucional como popular y cuyo objetivo era combinar fuerzas tanto de arriba como de abajo, así como utilizar las instituciones estatales de género para fomentar las organizaciones populares de mujeres. Sin embargo, este campo resultó conflictivo, y parte de su contenido impugnaba proyectos feministas populares con diferentes implicaciones para las divisiones de género en el trabajo. El análisis de la organización popular de las mujeres en torno a la ley orgánica del trabajo de Venezuela de 2012 muestra que la adopción estatal del feminismo marcó una apertura política de género con intenciones de popularizar el feminismo a la vez que presentaba el riesgo de que la organización popular de las mujeres fuera cooptada por el estado. El estado consideraba la organización y movilización popular de las mujeres como esenciales a la revolución. Sin embargo y hablando generalmente, se abocó a limitar su autonomía y organización cuando se trataba de desafiar las divisiones de género en el trabajo.

Rethinking Representations’ of Trade Unionism in South Africa

This essay reviews the literature on trade unions in South Africa in the last century. It points to some of its limitations seeking to challenge narrow conceptions and worn binaries of worker resistance and trade unionism, spontaneity and organization, that still plague some histories of labor and labor unions. It therefore attempts to review the literature in a way that opens up new readings and theoretical perspectives on labor and trade unions. It seeks to show how migrant and women’s organizing continue to be two areas that the literature has not adequately grasped. That women have often organized themselves outside of unions and dominant political structures implies that there is broad scope for theoretical perspectives that challenge masculine notions of organizing and institutional culture. In addition, there needs to be more attention paid to the issue that migrant members of unions themselves are finding more expression for their grievances outside of trade union bureaucratic structures. Moreover, in a country such as South Africa, with extremely high unemployment in a global economy of fewer and fewer jobs, it is necessary to ask whether the notion of industrial unionism, which has for so long excluded those on the margins of the so-called formal economy, is still viable, or whether new forms of organizing that are more cognizant of the local and global interconnectedness of all spheres of the economy, beyond the public/private divide, must be sought. In order for these perspectives to emerge, however, it is necessary to rethink the categories that people impose on history and how it limits future possibilities.

Class Capacity and Cross-Gender Solidarity: Women’s Organizing in an Egyptian Textile Company

Neoliberal restructuring and the feminization of export-led industries are often associated with the disempowerment of women in the workplace. Surprisingly, this disempowerment was not the case with a public textile company in Mahalla, an industrial city north of Cairo. Between 2006 and 2008, workers organized wildcat strikes involving around 24,000 workers. In contrast to the strike waves of the 1980s, women were integral to organizing the strikes and assumed leadership roles in them. This article argues that even as Egypt adopted structural adjustments in the 1990s that led to the decline of the historically leading sectors of textiles and yarn, exports of clothing increased. By the 2000s, the clothing sector was completely feminized and women in Mahalla were positioned in the most productive departments. This change empowered women by elevating their role and induced skeptical male colleagues to support women’s activism in the company and to build cross-gender solidarity.