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Analysing Women's Movements
Author(s) -
Molyneux Maxine
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
development and change
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.267
H-Index - 93
eISSN - 1467-7660
pISSN - 0012-155X
DOI - 10.1111/1467-7660.00077
Subject(s) - collective action , character (mathematics) , politics , action (physics) , identification (biology) , authoritarianism , sociology , relation (database) , democracy , political action , citizenship , social movement , epistemology , political science , law , philosophy , physics , geometry , mathematics , botany , quantum mechanics , database , computer science , biology
Women's movements, understood as variant forms of collective action in pursuit of common goals, have been analysed in both feminist political theory and development studies. This article aims to combine these two discussions to provide a theoretical account of the emergence and character of such movements through the identification of three different forms of collective action, termed ‘independent’, ‘associative’ and ‘directed’. The article considers the relation of such movements to projects of general political import, be these of an authoritarian or democratic character, and returns to the debate over the usefulness or otherwise of conceptualizing women's interests. It concludes with an assessment of the place of women's movements in the contemporary politics of citizenship.