2020s Mark A New Wave Of Feminist Mobilization

Today is International Women’s Day, marked across the world by protests like the Aurat March in Pakistan, to celebration like the Women of the World festival in London, to advance the cause of women’s empowerment and gender equality. For some, it is also time to reflect on the women’s rights movement, in terms of how far it has come but also how far it has to go.

A new body of research, the first of its kind to measure feminist mobilization globally, show that we are in the midst of another resurgence of feminist organizing. These working papers, authored by Dr. Laurel Weldon, a political science professor at Simon Fraser University and her team, point out that online grassroots activism is exploding, as well as global activities associated with #MeToo and Women’s March.

“It took quite long for research of this scope in this area to emerge, primarily for two reasons: first, it takes a lot of resources to do this kind of research and with the #MeToo phenomenon, there’s been a renewed interest to look into feminist movements,” says Dr. Weldon and cites the crucial support from the Global Fund for Women and Gates Foundation. “It is also a challenging project from an intellectual perspective, to grapple with the diversity of women’s mobilisation and across countries and across groups of women. There are feminist protests in the most unlikely places, such as within women’s prisons, and in unlikely forms, such as women driving in Saudi Arabia.”

The fourth wave of feminism, which began around 2012, is centered around the concept of intersectionality and the use of the Internet. Based on the research and activities around this year’s International Women’s Day, new features are emerging and defining a new wave of feminism for the decade.

Jude Kelly, Founder of the Women of the World (WOW) festival, said in a speech during the festival that, “WOW is intersectional and intergenerational and must remain so.” Intersectionality, which looks at how gender intersects with other forms of identities and underlying power structures, has gained traction but girls have been largely sidelined. “Girls have rooted in this movement in a strong way and may need more support,” continues Kelly.

An example that demonstrates the importance of adolescent girls is the With and For Girls Awards, which celebrated 25 girl-led and girl-centered groups from 22 countries. At the awards, four individuals read out a feminist manifesto on how different generations can work together. The feminist manifesto was written by all 55 representatives. The four people that read it were picked by the others to represent that voice. 

Moreover, on top of the increasing popularity of online mobilization, women and girls are increasingly organizing using arts and culture. “There are so many new forms of feminist mobilization. Not only do we see less skepticism about the effectiveness of online activism in the new #MeToo movement, we also see many new, exciting forms of organizing, particularly by girls,” says Dr. Weldon.

A few examples of new forms of organising include INAD Centre for Theatre and Arts, a children’s theatre company in Palestine. “I was the lead actress in a play called Little Match Girl, and it was also cast with girls and young people with special needs. We talked about girls’ rights in this play, including her right to education, right to have a safe home and right to have play,” says 13-year-old Emilia Massou, who was in London with her mother to receive the With and For Girls Awards. “When girls see me playing a role like that, asking for these rights, I’ll become a role model and empower them to go to talk to their families.”

In Libya, HERA is an organisation to create sport spaces for girls to encourage reconciliation, healing and conflict resolution. “I started playing football as a young girl, and ended up joining the national women’s team - I didn’t even know it existed before I joined,” says Asia Alhamadi, Co-Founder of HERA. She was part of it for five years, and noticing how football has empowered them, a group of them decided to form an organisation to share these experiences with other girls.

These examples from the hardest places echo Dr. Weldon’s research findings that feminist mobilization is strong and resurgent. Amid the growing backlash, there is cause for optimism.