Key Concepts in Transnational Feminist Movements

Why This Matters

Transnational feminist movements represent one of the most significant developments in global politics over the past three decades. You're being tested on your ability to understand how activists organize across national boundaries, challenge state sovereignty, and reframe issues like violence and economic exploitation as matters of human rights, global governance, and intersectional justice. These movements demonstrate core course concepts: how non-state actors influence international norms, why local struggles become globalized, and how identity categories like gender, race, and class intersect in political mobilization.

Don't just memorize movement names and founding dates—know what each movement illustrates about transnational organizing strategies, intersectionality in practice, and the tension between universal rights claims and local contexts. When an FRQ asks you to analyze how feminist movements challenge traditional international relations frameworks, you need concrete examples that show why crossing borders matters and how solidarity actually works.

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Rights-Based Advocacy Movements

These movements frame women's experiences as human rights violations, strategically using international legal frameworks and institutions to pressure states. By redefining "private" issues like domestic violence as public human rights concerns, they challenge the traditional separation between domestic and international politics.

Global Campaign for Women's Human Rights

• Reframes women's rights as human rights—a strategic move that places gender-based violations under international legal scrutiny rather than leaving them to domestic jurisdiction
• Targets UN mechanisms and treaty bodies to create accountability, using instruments like CEDAW to pressure non-compliant states
• Bridges local activism and global advocacy, demonstrating how transnational networks amplify grassroots concerns to influence international norms

Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID)

• Connects gender equality to development agendas—challenges the assumption that economic growth automatically benefits women
• Provides infrastructure for feminist organizing, offering research, funding networks, and strategic resources that smaller organizations lack
• Centers economic justice alongside political rights, recognizing that formal legal equality means little without material resources

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Anti-Violence Mobilizations

These movements specifically target gender-based violence, using mass mobilization and cultural intervention to shift both policy and social norms. They demonstrate how feminists move beyond legal reform to challenge the cultural attitudes that normalize violence.

#MeToo Movement

• Leverages digital platforms for consciousness-raising—transforms individual testimonies into collective political claims through social media virality
• Exposes structural power imbalances in workplaces, entertainment, and institutions, moving beyond "bad actor" narratives to systemic critique
• Sparked policy changes globally, from workplace harassment laws to institutional accountability mechanisms, though implementation remains uneven across contexts

One Billion Rising

• Uses embodied protest and artistic expression—dance and performance as political tools that transcend language barriers and create emotional solidarity
• Mobilizes massive global participation around a single day of action, demonstrating the scale of concern about violence against women
• Challenges consent culture at the societal level, framing violence prevention as requiring fundamental shifts in masculinity and gender relations

Ni Una Menos (Not One Less)

• Originated in Argentina's femicide crisis—demonstrates how local urgency can spark transnational movements across Latin America and beyond
• Explicitly intersectional framework addresses how race, class, and sexuality shape women's vulnerability to violence differently
• Combines street protest with legal advocacy, demanding both immediate accountability and structural reforms to justice systems

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Labor and Economic Justice Movements

These movements connect gender oppression to capitalist economic structures, arguing that women's liberation requires transforming economic systems—not just achieving formal legal equality. They highlight how unpaid care work, precarious employment, and economic dependency perpetuate gender hierarchies.

International Women's Strike

• Makes invisible labor visible—by withdrawing from paid work, care work, and consumption simultaneously, demonstrates how economies depend on women's devalued contributions
• Draws on historical labor feminism while updating tactics for contemporary gig economy and service sector realities
• Creates cross-class solidarity by uniting professional women, domestic workers, and unpaid caregivers around shared structural position

Solidarity Economy Movement

• Proposes alternatives to capitalist structures—cooperatives, fair trade networks, and community economies that prioritize social reproduction over profit extraction
• Centers women's economic empowerment through ownership models and collective bargaining that challenge traditional employer-employee hierarchies
• Links gender justice to environmental sustainability, recognizing that extractive capitalism harms both women and ecosystems

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Mass Mobilization and Global Solidarity Networks

These movements prioritize building durable transnational infrastructure and coordinating large-scale collective action across national boundaries. They demonstrate how feminists create organizational capacity to sustain pressure over time rather than relying on single campaigns.

Women's March Global

• Coordinates simultaneous protests across continents—the 2017 marches represented one of the largest single-day protests in history
• Embraces intersectional coalition politics, explicitly linking reproductive rights, racial justice, LGBTQ+ rights, and immigrant rights under feminist framing
• Demonstrates both power and limitations of mass mobilization—massive turnout but ongoing debates about translating protest into policy change

World March of Women

• Builds permanent organizational infrastructure—unlike single-event mobilizations, maintains ongoing networks connecting women's organizations globally
• Links feminist demands to anti-militarism and environmental justice, framing patriarchy as connected to war, colonialism, and ecological destruction
• Prioritizes Global South leadership, challenging the dominance of Northern feminisms in transnational organizing

Transnational Feminist Networks (TFNs)

• Function as connective tissue between local organizations, enabling resource sharing, strategic coordination, and mutual learning across contexts
• Navigate tension between universal claims and local specificity—must balance shared feminist principles with respect for contextual differences
• Influence international institutions by coordinating advocacy at UN conferences, treaty negotiations, and development forums

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Quick Reference Table

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Self-Check Questions

1. Which two movements most directly challenge the separation between "economic" and "political" demands in feminist organizing, and how do their strategies differ?

2. Compare #MeToo and Ni Una Menos: What does each movement reveal about how context shapes which forms of gender-based violence become politically visible?

3. If an FRQ asked you to analyze tensions between "universal" feminist claims and local specificity, which movement would you use as your primary example and why?

4. Identify two movements that explicitly connect gender justice to environmental concerns. What theoretical framework links these issues?

5. How do Transnational Feminist Networks (TFNs) differ from single-issue campaigns like One Billion Rising in their approach to creating political change? What are the strengths and limitations of each model?