6.4 Working Outside of the System: Social Movements and Activism
6.4 Working Outside of the System: Social Movements and Activism
Elizabeth B. Pearce
We’ve spent a large portion of this chapter focused on historical and current aspects of the way social processes work in this country: the census, voting, representation, the courts, and elected officials. We have attempted to uncover some of the flaws, gaps, and structures that lead to unequal representation and treatment of families. Change within these processes is possible, but sometimes challenging because the existing structures favor some groups and reinforce negative bias and inequality toward others. Working outside of the systems to push for change is an alternative for people whom the systems have marginalized.
Social Movements
A social movement may be defined as an organized effort by a large number of people to bring about or impede social, political, economic, or cultural change. Defined in this way, social movements might sound similar to special-interest groups, and they do have some things in common. But a major difference between social movements and special-interest groups lies in the nature of their actions. Special-interest groups normally work within the system via conventional political activities such as lobbying and election campaigning. In contrast, social movements often work outside the system by engaging in various kinds of protest, including demonstrations, picket lines, sit-ins, and sometimes outright violence (figure 6.15).
In this section we will look at selected periods of time and social movements—ones that have influenced family roles and relationships while simultaneously advocating for equal rights and responsibilities. In addition, we will emphasize the intersectional nature of social movements and social change. Let’s start with feminism.
Feminism and Family Roles
Feminist movements have generated and nurtured feminist theories and academic knowledge. Feminist movements use critical reflection about the world to change it. It is because of various social movements—feminist activism, workers’ activism, and civil rights activism throughout the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries—that “feminist history” is a viable field of study today. Feminist history is part of a larger history that draws on the experiences of traditionally ignored and disempowered groups (e.g., factory workers, immigrants, people of color, lesbians) to rethink and challenge the histories that have been traditionally written from the experiences and points of view of the powerful (e.g., colonizers, representatives of the state, the wealthy)—the histories we typically learn in high school textbooks.
What has come to be called the first wave of the feminist movement began in the mid-19th century focused on laws that would give women the right to vote, the right to education and employment, and striking down laws in which her property passed to her new husband upon marriage. The Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments (Falls, n.d.), passed in 1848, describes many “