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Running head: WOMEN'S HISTORY Women's History May 26, 2009 Women's History Questions about womens movement and social movement have always been difficult to answer. Sociologists also have different definitions of the terms, focusing attention mostly on such qualities like innovative and collective behavior, network character, extra-institutionally, multicenteredness, the shifting and fluid boundaries of movement membership, and the willingness of members to disrupt order a little or a lot. (Roth 1) To a certain extent social movement can be defined as a non-routine and at the same time highly organized entities where participants communicated with each other in order to create new meanings about various subjects and challenged power that was based on the creation of these meanings (Roth 1). Most sociologists agree that social movement can be defined as a collective attempt to establish a new order of life. In its turn, womens movement is a transformational social movement aimed to resist or promote new changes in the structure of our society, based on social solidarities and common principles (Austin 52). Basically, there are four major factors that were encouraging women to take part in social movements, namely, the issues related to economic survival, to ethnic, racial or nationalist struggles, the issues directly related to broad humanistic problems and, finally, the so-called womens rights issues. While examining the phenomenon of social movements it can be concluded that there is something different in womens participation in social movements.
For example, Lucretia Mott in her letter to Martha Coffin Wright carries a message that women reformers in mixed-gender social movements have obviously different experiences compared to men. For example, in her letter Lucretia emphasizes on fact that James Miller McKim in "Nation completely forgot about womens role in society and claims that woman was ignored in their new organization, and if it really were a reconstruction for the nation, she ought not so to be. (Mott 415 - 17) Lucretia Mott consider that this mistake was humiliating for their anti-slavery women and Quaker women and when McKim tells her that he is not sure whether there is a necessity for women, she exclaims that there is a necessity for one half the nation to act with [them]. (Mott 415 - 17) The fact that womens role and their experiences as participants of mixed-gender social movements is different from mens find support in another primary document, Mothers' Assistants, " The Circular, 4 April 1870 (p. 22). Despite all attempts undertaken by women, men still continue to perceive women as those who should perform traditional domestic work. Mothers' Assistants emphasizes on the fact that women still continue providing traditional childcare services, albeit in an altered form. (Mothers' Assistants p. 22) Finally, it should be mentioned that in contrast to traditional movements, sociologists usually divide womens movements into three broad categories: non-feminist movements, feminist and participation in mixed-gender social movements.
They emphasize that womens resistance and protest is quite different from that of mens as women have always been present in protest and wanted to prove that they could equally participate in social life, in the political and public spheres, the spheres that were traditionally identified as the proper realm of the male and domestic life as the proper realm of the female. (Roth 16). Works Cited Harriet N. Austin, "Woman's Present and Future, " Water-Cure Journal, 16 (Sept. 1853), p. 57 Lucretia Mott to Martha Coffin Wright, 17 April 1865, in Anna Davis Hallowell, ed. , James and Lucretia Mott: Life and Letters (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1884), pp. 415 - 17 Mothers' Assistants, " The Circular, 4 April 1870, p. 22. What Are Social Movements and What Is Gendered About Women's Participation in Social Movements? . 26 May 2009 < web >.
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Research essay sample on Social Movements Womens Movement
