women in civil resistance - dr. mary king & dr. anne-marie codur (fsi2013)
DESCRIPTION
Most women’s activism has historically been nonviolent direct action, which has helped develop the technique of civil resistance. Movements for abolition of slavery and women’s suffrage made common cause in the nineteenth century. Women’s activism has been the galvanizing force in several civil-resistance movements, for example, the Montgomery bus boycott (1955–1956) that launched the U.S. civil rights movement was sparked by JoAnne Robinson and the city’s black women’s political council. Women can sometimes exploit traditional political space as wives, mothers and nurturers, as did German gentile women married to Jewish men, who in 1943 saved their husbands through street protests in Berlin. Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo dared to march weekly in Argentina’s capital, 1977–1983, seeking acknowledgment that their children had been “disappeared” by the military generals. Their audacious demonstrations created the dynamic that would lead to the fall of the regime. Women have sometimes been able to accomplish what their male peers could not, as with the Palestinian women who led popular committees in the 1987 intifada. Israeli women’s activism in the Israeli “Four Mothers Movement” exerted such pressure on the Israeli government that the IDF withdrew from Lebanon in 2000. The significance of women’s leadership, decision-making, strategy, organization, communications, networking, and tactics needs to be more systemically surveyed and acknowledged, as their role is critical in the success of any movement of civil resistance.TRANSCRIPT
Nonviolent Force in the
Struggle for Change
Women in Civil Resistance
by Anne-Marie Codur and
Mary Elizabeth King
“Universal” human rights often
established by civil resistance
• Human rights laws and international conventions have
been codified after mass social movements fought for
their establishment.
• Human rights, civil rights, women’s rights, and minority
rights institutionalized as result of civil resistance
movements.
• Civil resistance is not conflict resolution, although this
may be one outcome.
• Laws often enshrine injustices — many if not most
gender inequities are legal.
Women in civil resistance
Pam McAllister: “Most of what we commonly call ‘women’s history’ is actually
the history of women’s role in the development of nonviolent action.”
On both sides of the Atlantic, civil resisters fought against
human bondage.
Seal of the British Anti-Slavery Society, England, 1780s
Women leaders played critical roles in the
abolition of slavery
Women struggling for the rights of oppressed
people led them to fight for women’s rights “I expect to plead not for the slave only, but for suffering humanity everywhere.
Especially do I mean to labor for the elevation of my sex.”
- Lucy Stone (1818-1893), abolitionist and advocate of women’s rights
The U.S. suffragist movement for the vote grew out of the antislavery movement
National Woman’s
suffrage association,
Chicago, 1880
Advocates for women's suffrage
demonstrating, 1913
Transnational multi-decade
campaigns for women’s ballot
• 1893: New Zealand first nation to enfranchise women
to vote.
• As 20th century opened, women’s nonviolent suffrage
movements formed in China, Iran, Korea, the
Philippines, Russia, Sri Lanka (Ceylon), Turkey,
Vietnam, and Japan.
• International relations expert Fred Halliday: The
sweep of women’s suffrage campaigns is one of the
most remarkable transnational movements of the
modern age.
Japanese women vote for the first time, 1946
Women and the Indian
independence struggles
• Gandhi’s hand-looming of homespun khadi (“constructive program”)
— millions of women
• Late 1920s, Indian women leading local struggles
• Gandhi criticized for insufficient attention to women’s rights, but his
incorporation of political work by women had by 1931 led to an Indian
National Congress Party resolution committing itself to the equal
rights of women
Newly independent post-colonial countries in
the 1960s did not exclude women from politics
because of:
● Women’s significant contributions to the
independence struggles
● Concept of women voting became assumed
for the modern nation-state
Women fought for workers’ rights and through that
struggle also advanced women’s rights
Key role by women unionists
Maud Malone, 1914, spokeswoman for the Library Employees'
Union, in New York, she fought against the inferior status of
women library workers and their low pay.
Women’s Trade Union league,
New York, 1910
Lucy Parsons,
U.S. labor organizer
(1853-1942)
Louise Michel (1830-1905), emblematic figure
in workers’ movements and women’s
emancipation in France
• Most women’s activism is
nonviolent direct action, which
has contributed to the
development of the technique
of civil resistance
Pam McAllister, "You Can’t Kill the Spirit: Women and Nonviolent Action,"
in Nonviolent Social Movements: A Geographical Perspective, ed. Stephen Zunes,
Lester R. Kurtz and Sarah Beth Asher (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999), 21.
Montgomery bus boycott
(1955–1956):
sparked by women
Rediscover history through the lens
of nonviolent action, bringing to
light the prominent role of women • Effectiveness of women’s nonviolent direct action often
ignored, unacknowledged
• Interchange of ideas between women’s involvement and
history of nonviolent struggle overlooked downplayed.
Rosa Parks with the Reverend
Martin Luther King, Jr.
(background)
Montgomery 1955
If not for Rosa Parks,
we might not have heard of Martin Luther King Jr.
Rosa Parks: “You may do that.”
• Parks’s action: nothing to do with “tired feet.”
• 42-year-old Parks had attended Highlander Folk Center
training institute for labor union organizers in Monteagle,
Tennessee.
• Learned basics of civil resistance, including civil
disobedience.
• Deliberate, politically wide-awake action. When the driver
threatened to have her arrested, she said, “You may do
that.” She stayed so as to break the law.
• She had 6 or more opportunities to leave the bus.
Unsung heroines of civil rights
•
•
•
•
•
Mass meeting, First Baptist Church,
Montgomery bus boycott (1955). The
citywide boycott was initiated by women
Sojourner Truth, Ida Wells, Ella Baker, Pauli
Murray, Septima Clark, Rosa Parks,
Jo Ann Robinson, and many others. . . .
In the words of women leaders…
Septima Clark:
“In stories about the civil rights movement you hear
mostly about the black ministers. But if you talk to the
women who were there, you’ll hear another story. I think
the civil rights movement would never have taken off if
some women hadn’t started to speak up.”
Ella Baker:
“The movement of the 1950s and 1960s was carried
largely by women, since it came out of church groups.
Their number in the movement was much larger than
that of men.” Mary E. King, “Women and Civil Rights—A Personal Reflection,” 12th Annual Fannie Lou Hamer
Lecture Series (Jackson, Mississippi: Department of Political Science, Jackson State University,
October 5 1995).
Unreported role of women in the Polish
struggle against communism (1980-81)
Women’s hunger march in protest against food
shortages, August 1981
1980, sit-down strike, Gdansk Shipyard
September 17, 1981: workers' representatives, including Lech
Wałęsa, formed a nationwide labor union, Solidarity
Solidarnosc: 10 million members by late
autumn 1980, half of them women
The women who defeated
communism in Poland
“When on December 13, 1981, martial
law was imposed, most of Solidarnosc
leaders were rounded up and arrested.
Many women were arrested as well, but
their numbers had been underestimated
by the police. They hid the few
remaining male leaders, founded
underground Solidarity structures, and
published the main Solidarity newspaper,
providing the continuity to a movement
that was in danger of extinction.
This is the untold history of the Solidarity
movement in Poland.”
- Shana Penn
Women pave the way to
social change in Iran
“A victory for women paves the way for democracy in Iran.”
-Shirin Ebadi, 2009
Founder, Defenders of Human Rights Center,
2003 Nobel Peace Prize laureate
The One Million Signatures Campaign was
formally launched on August 27, 2006, to
collect one million signatures in support of
a petition to the Iranian Parliament asking
for revision and reform of existing laws that
discriminated against women.
Iran: when women’s rights movements are
a catalyst for broader political change
The Iranian women’s movement,
One Million Signatures Campaign, and specific
approaches led the way for the 2009 Green Wave
• Dilemma actions (bursting into a stadium)
• Unifying the people (men & women, secular & religious,
& rural)
• International capacity-building (networking)
• Tactical innovation: noncooperation, symbols, songs
• Communications: use
of digital media (blogs,
cell phones)
Iran’s women’s rights movement sparked
the mobilization of civil society for the 2009
“green wave”
One outcome in Iran:
fertility transition Iran has experienced the fastest fertility transition in
history, from 7 children per woman (on average) in 1985,
to 1.8 children per woman in 2009. Fertility in Iran
declined an astonishing 70 percent over a 30-year period,
“one of the most rapid and pronounced fertility declines
ever recorded in human history.” By 2000, Iran’s fertility
rate had fallen to two births per woman, below the level
necessary to replace current population. - Study by Nicholas Eberstadt and Apoorva Shah
Effecting family gender dynamics?
●These data suggest that Iranian women have asserted
control over their reproductive autonomy, and that the
power dynamics inside marriage are becoming more
equal between husband and wife.
●Illustration: a couple’s relationship
in Iranian cinema: “A Separation.”
Oscar: best foreign film 2012
Is patriarchy losing power at the family level?
And is it a matter of time before it loses
power at the socio-political level?
Women’s creativity within
patriarchal systems
Women’s strategies of resistance facing
systems of extreme patriarchy
Hyper-patriarchal systems both subjugate and idealize women:
Subjugation: a woman is considered a minor, too weak or ignorant to make her own decisions, needing to be protected and cared for by a man: her father, brother, or husband
Idealization: the “good wife” and “good mother,” the nurturer, protector, and educator of the children
Gendered stereotypes are exaggerated; men encouraged to become “hyper-males”; strength and military values celebrated
Traditional family values, cultural pillar of support for the system.
Women can sometimes exploit political
space as mothers and nurturers
Strategic advantage: if women challenge authorities in the name
of “superior” family values — good wives and devoted mothers —
they can create powerful, irresistible dilemma actions, in which
any response can help them.
Historically, women have been able to
take advantage of gender-defined
freedoms or stereotypes
Berlin 1943: wifely revolt!
Married to Jewish men who
had been rounded up to be
sent to death camps,
“devoted, perfect Aryan
wives” protested for one week
before the Gestapo . . .
posing an embarrassing dilemma
for the Nazi authorities, who
released 1,700 intermarried
Jewish prisoners.
Argentina 1976-1983
Mothers of the Disappeared
Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo
Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo
dared to march weekly Goal of Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo:
information and acknowledgment that their children and
loved ones had been “disappeared” by the military
generals’ “dirty war.”
Chile’s mothers resisting
Under General Augusto Pinochet’s 1980s dictatorship, mothers
stitched tales of resistance into traditional tapestries, arpilleras.
Ignored as insignificant women’s work, they were able to smuggle
them into and out of jails — sharing information with sons and
husbands. They sold their
quilts beyond their borders,
when a fearful news corps
could not. The tapestries
roused anti-Pinochet
sympathizers worldwide,
bringing financial and political
backing for the civil resistance.
Arpillera, courtesy of Royal Alberta Museum
Women pose stronger dilemmas for
security forces than do men Presence of women lowers level of violent response from security forces;
beating of women poses stronger moral predicaments
Women on the frontline, in direct contact with the police and security
apparatus, may protect other (male) demonstrators
Versailles, October 5, 1789
Serbia, 2000
Cairo, 2011
Women can change the dynamics of
confrontation with security forces
The “disarming” factor: nonviolent method of
fraternization — reaching out to the humanity
of soldiers, treating them as sons and brothers
Cairo 2011 Ukraine’s Orange revolution 2004
Scholars believe that dozens of
unreported sex strikes occurred
throughout history — especially
used to exert pressure to cease
fighting wars. . . .
The “Lysistratic non-action”
method has proven effective in
diverse cases:
Colombia, 1997 and 2006
Liberia, 2003
Kenya, 2009
Women counteracting patriarchal power
As a last resort: Sex Strike!
Women and civil resistance
movements in Africa
Wangari Maathai and the Green Belt Movement in Kenya
(2004 Nobel Peace Laureate)
National Council of Women launched the Green Belt Movement to plant trees in 1977,
against desertification and for rural energy. The late Wangari Maathai was repeatedly
arrested and beaten. For 30 years, she mobilized 50,000 poor women to plant 40 million
trees, while fighting for environmental protection and anti-corruption policies in
Kenya. In this photo, at Liberty Corner, she meets with Mothers of Political Prisoners,
a group that she helped to start.
Doing the unimaginable:
the Women of Liberia
Leymah Gbowee and President Ellen
Johnson-Sirleaf, 2011 Nobel Peace Prize
laureates
Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) lightning actions
Women and civil resistance in the
Middle East
Palestinian women lead the way
Second from left: Matiel Moghannam, a Protestant Palestinian feminist leader, author, The Arab
Woman and the Palestine Problem, London, 1937
‒ Photo, courtesy of Walid Khalidi, Before Their Diaspora, 1984
Delegation of Muslim and
Christian women activists
met with the British high
commissioner to plead for
Britain to honor its
promises to the Arabs as it
had to the Jews.
Jerusalem 1929
Palestinian women: ahead of their time and their region
1921: Creation of Palestinian Women Union
1929: First Arab Women’s Congress of Palestine, organized by Arab Women’s Executive
Committee – petitions to Queen Mary, British Government, and League of Nations.
Silent demonstration of Christian and Muslim women, Old City of Jerusalem (1933)
Fighting for Palestine and women’s
rights simultaneously
“Personal and national liberation go hand in hand. When both
sexes are deprived of their freedom and national dignity by
the Israelis, it would be inappropriate for us to deal only
with sexual inequalities. On the other hand, we will fail
both women and our cause if we do not understand that
liberating women from discrimination will better equip
them for waging a successful national struggle”
‒ Zahira Kamal
Quoted in Mary King, A Quiet Revolution:
The First Palestinian Intifada and Nonviolent Resistance (2007)
Zahira Kamal, elected first female leader of a political
party in Palestine (2011)
Women pave the way for the first intifada (1987)
Palestinians demonstrating in Bethlehem, 1987 intifada
Poster, General Union of Palestinian women,
1970s
1970s-1980s: strong women organizations. In the absence of
their own government, women’s social welfare organizations
claim civil society as de facto informal governance
Essential role of women as community leaders
and organizers in first intifada: remarkably nonviolent
mobilization that succeeded in pressuring Israeli society
and government to concede the beginning of Palestinian
(limited) autonomy
The Palestinian Authority, return to patriarchy, and
marginalization of women
The first and second intifadas compared (adapted from Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan, Why Civil resistance Works (2011)
Nonviolent campaigns Violent campaigns
Estimated participants hundreds of thousands tens of thousands
Primary participants middle class male youth
students and intellectuals PLO and Islamists
trade unions extremist groups
women’s groups Islamic groups
Marxists
poor, rural
businesses, etc…
Tactical diversity clear unclear
Effect, regime repression backfire suppression
Outcome partial success failure
Women in Palestine’s current phase of popular resistance
(2004‒2012)
Only with the re-emergence of nonviolent popular resistance in villages
struggling against the Wall did women rise again, to play a key role
In Budrus, a conservative rural
environment, women able to
mobilize in effective ways
Israeli women’s civil resistance
• 1988: Women in Black created by Jewish-Israeli women who oppose Israel's
occupation of the Palestinian Territories — use elementary nonviolent method:
denunciation.
• Wearing black to convey mourning,
they silently hold placards opposing their government’s policy: “Dai L’Kibbush,”
or “Down with the Occupation!”
“Four Mothers Movement in
Israel”
• Named for 4 mothers whose sons served in elite IDF units in
Lebanon, it used 2 methods: petitions and vigils to win tens of
thousands of supporters.
• Israeli scholar Tamar Hermann: movement’s strategy strictly
nonviolent to have maximal inclusivity and generate positive new
coverage. She calls it “the most successful grassroots
organization in Israeli’s history.”
- Tamar Hermann, “Winning the Mainstream: Arba Imahot, the Four Mothers Movement in Israel,”
in Civilian Jihad: Nonviolent Struggle Democratization, and Governance in the Middle East,
ed. Maria J. Stephan
Women’s participation in the
Arab Awakening
Women: full participants in
the Arab Awakening
Arab Awakening: Ending the
patriarchal father-son succession
Passing of power from father to son a characteristic of
patriarchal (and tribal) societies, in the Arab world and
elsewhere.
Anthropologist John Borneman: “The public
renunciation of the son’s claim to inherit the father’s
power definitively ends the specific Arab model of
succession that has been incorporated into state
dictatorships among tribal authorities.”
John Borneman, “Oedipal Roots of Revolt in the Middle East,” Anthropology News, May 2011.
Egypt’s revolution: challenging patriarchy
“Thanks to social networks, young unmarried women were able to rise to
leadership roles – they took over the cyberspace,
since conservative society didn’t allow them to take
over public spaces. ” Asmaa Mahfouz, Facebook
Tahrir Square: Men and women struggling
together, 20 percent of demonstrators were women.
This experience has modeled more equal, respectful
gender relationships
Yet in the transition phase, women have been marginalized, as elections have reinforced
conservative, patriarchal structures, for now. The struggle is still at its start. . . .
Women in Egypt were targeted by regime-sponsored thugs and security.
Soldiers assaulted women on Saturday December 17, 2011, including this
volunteer doctor at Tahrir Square field hospital.
Egyptian women of the
revolution
Web Site: www.egyptianwomen.info
© Photographs and article by Tatiana Philiptchenko
In Yemen’s traditional society, women suffer as
leaders if seen as “feminist” and fighting for the
rights of women to be “free”
“Women fought for human rights, not
for women rights. We, women,
struggled to give men their rights!” –
Tawakul Karman (speech, Harvard’s
Kennedy School, June 7, 2012)
Yemen’s revolution:
despite patriarchy
Tawakul Karman,
2011 Nobel Peace Prize laureate
Tawakul was accepted as a leader
because she belongs to a conservative
party, she is a “good Muslim woman,” she
is married and a mother of 3 children.
Is there a women’s advantage in
struggles?
• Networking skills in organizing:
“More than any other groups, women’s
organizations use the terms ‘network’ and
‘networking’ to describe their interactions.”
- Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists beyond
Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (1998)
Family/community networks: women can mobilize elderly, children, youth – weaving ties of solidarity among generations
International community: Women’s suffragist movement: most successful transnational movement of 20th century
Building solidarity ties across lines of divides and conflicts:
Black and White women in anti-slavery movement (19th century) and civil rights movement (20th century)
Israel/Palestine Liberia: Christian/Muslim women’s massive sit-ins Women of Srebrenica
(memorializing losses in Bosnia-Herzegovina)
In Social Network era, harnessing those networking skills at a broader, international scale: Transnational electronic activism
(57% of Facebook users are women)
Conclusion: research questions?
In contemporary struggles, how are women activists
contributing to the development of strategy and tactics of
civil resistance?
What properties of networking, characteristic of women’s
organizing, may strengthen future civil-resistance
campaigns?
How has the philosophical and strategic connection
between the means and ends, which is historically part of
civil resistance, empower and potentiate women resisters?