Introduction
That is what the American women’s movement stands for –– the unceasing effort of attaining equal rights regardless of gender, and such a struggle can remain unparalleled in the country’s history. To dissect the causes that propelled this formidable social movement, we turn to Felicia Kornbluh’s seminal work, “Dissident Political History. We also extend our study beyond the spatial boundaries by drawing valuable insights from Kornbluh’s chapters on Africa, the Middle East, North Africa, and Australia and comparing approaches in the United States, Canada, Western Europe, and Japan.
Leadership Dynamics
Kornbluh’s examination of social movements worldwide prompts a crucial question: The leadership dynamic of the Women’s movement in the United States. Each chapter in the African Social Movements section provides examples of different leadership styles, ranging from charismatic figures to grassroots community-based initiatives (Lafore, 2022). This is reflected particularly by the Women’s Movement, where leaders such as Susan B. Anthony and Gloria Steinem represent various perspectives in leadership. The fight for suffrage, second-wave feminism, and later waves display leadership strategies that are flexible at different times, reflecting an ability to adapt to changing times as the movement grows.
In the class reading “The New Business Landscape” in the Middle East North Africa region, the author argues that organizations strategically focus on strategizing for complex environments to adapt and thrive amidst dynamic challenges and opportunities. Likewise, the Women’s Movement successfully adjusted its tactics according to changing cultural mores and legal realities; witness its attempts at achieving legal reforms and battling for reproductive freedoms. Leadership Strategies Analysis provides a resilience roadmap for navigating the evolving challenges of the feminist movement, offering valuable insights to address and overcome obstacles in its path.
Global Influences
Looking at social movements in Australia expands our view and makes us reflect on how global developments could have influenced the US women’s movement. Kornbluh invites us to investigate transnational relations and links. Did the international events or campaigns facilitate or control the Women’s Movement? American suffragists could have been influenced by other waves of feminism, such as those witnessed during the global sui-generis revolution (Rubio-Marín, 2022). Connecting the dots between global and local movements will help us to discover other underlying reasons behind women’s movement.
Contemporary Dynamics
Technology has transformed the landscape of social movements in the digital age. The class reading delves into Obar, Zube, and Lampe’s analysis of the Women’s Movement from a contemporary perspective, mainly focusing on the role of social media in advocacy groups in the United States. The study elucidates the pivotal role of digital platforms in facilitating civic engagement and fostering collective action among activists (Etter & Albu, 2021). The comprehensive examination sheds light on the transformative impact of social media on the dynamics of modern-day advocacy and activism within the United States.
Digital media has played an essential role in empowering, uniting, and amplifying women’s voices in the current Women’s Movement in various ways, such as social media campaigns or online activism. Here, technology meets activism, resulting in the ability to speak on behalf of oneself, which proves exceptionally dynamic concerning present-day communication channels.
Emotional Dynamics
Jasper’s exploration of emotions within the context of protests unveils the inner feelings of the Women’s Movement, providing valuable insights into the complex emotional landscape that shapes and propels this pivotal social and political initiative.
Anger, hope, and solidarity shape collective action significantly. Reviewing the emotional components of the Women’s Movement brings forth the sentiments that were the energy source of this movement (Wang et al., 2022). Protests offer an aural, oral, and visual record of the emotions that drive these actions.
Conclusion
We were open to historical, global, contemporary, and emotional dimensions as we sought to uncover the roots of the Women’s Movement in the US. The groundwork done by Kornbluh’s social movement provides the framework for historically and geographically placing the Women’s Movement. We then looked at how each area affected the other as we analyzed issues such as leadership strategies, global influences, modern interpretations, and emotions. By discussing the historical background of the Women’s Movement, we can establish in this paper a framework for appreciating that the causation of the Women’s Movement is just as multiple and unpredictable as the movement itself, thus mirroring the nature of change.
References
Etter, M., & Albu, O. B. (2021). Activists in the dark: Social media algorithms and collective action in two social movement organizations. Organization, 28(1), 68-91. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1350508420961532.
Lafore, T. S. (2022). Teaching Solidarity: Popular Education in Grassroots US Social Movements (Doctoral dissertation, University of San Francisco). https://repository.usfca.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1609&context=diss.
Rubio-Marín, R. (2022). Global Gender Constitutionalism and Women’s Citizenship. Cambridge University Press. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=2LeFEAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT15&dq=American+suffragists+could+have+been+influenced+by+other+waves+of+feminism,+such+as+those+witnessed+during+the+global+sui-generis+revolution.&ots=FcojMEFEdB&sig=HBP-Op7iEH0usRnyobEXi-4KwhA.
Wang, Y., Song, W., Tao, W., Liotta, A., Yang, D., Li, X., … & Zhang, W. (2022). A systematic review on affective computing: Emotion models, databases, and recent advances. Information Fusion, 83, 19-52. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2203.06935.
write