From the feminist void to the feminist club : three essays on feminists movements and social change

Abstract

This dissertation examines the influence of feminist movements in bringing social change, specifically on violence against women, women’s representation, and the social acceptance of feminists’ demands. The first chapter, motivates and summarizes the main contributions. The second chapter, ‘We Are Your Pack: Feminist Movements on the Social Sanctioning of Violence against Women’, examines the effects of the International Women’s Day protests in Spain on societal responses to gender-based violence. The findings indicate that feminist protests have significantly increased both the reporting of violence and societal support for victims. The second chapter, ‘We March, She Runs? The Impact of Protest’s Movements on the Nomination of political minorities’ with Alba Huidobro, takes again the case of International Women’s Day protests in Spain. We assess their effects at the political level, examining the impact of feminist protests on parties’ nomination of female candidates. We find that parties react strategically to protests by placing women candidates in visible positions without challenging party leadership. The third chapter, ‘The Intrusion of Value Change: Mass Media and the Normalization of Contested Issues’ with Elias Dinas, focuses on what can make feminist movements popular in the first place. We follow the case of Argentina and the campaign for abortion rights, exploring the role of first movers in changing the political narrative around contested issues. We find that mass media triggered the political agenda around abortion by breaking the social stigma around this issue.