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date: 05 March 2021

Abstract and Keywords

This chapter starts by exploring the ways in which comparative research on women’s movements has challenged dominant conceptions in social movement theory, notably the antagonism between movements and institutions and the conflation of protest and disruption. The chapter then turns to the specific insights of French research on the women’s movement and feminism. First, a series of studies have explored the politicization of gender identity and the the historical interplay between mobilizing as women and doing so for women. Second, there has been considerable examination of the complex ways in which feminist protest has become ingrained in state institutions. Third, several works have focused on the process of diffusion and individual appropriation of feminist ideas outside the women’s movement. A recent line of research has placed the emphasis on the intersecting power relationships that shape the contemporary women’s movement.

Keywords: France, women’s movements, feminism, social movements, women, gender

Laure Bereni

Laure Bereni is a political sociologist, a Permanent Researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), and a member of the Centre Maurice Halbwachs in Paris (CNRS/ENS/EHESS). She has taught in various academic institutions, including the Institute of French Studies at New York University, the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, and Sciences Po, Paris. Her research work focuses on gender, social movements, and anti-discrimination policies. Her recent publications include La bataille de la parité. Mobilisations pour la féminisation du pouvoir (Paris: Economica, 2015), “A Paradigmatic Social Movement? Women’s Movements and the Definition of Contentious Politics” (co-authored with A. Revillard) in Sociétés contemporaines (85), and “From Grassroots to Institutions: Women’s Movements Studies in Europe” (co-authored with A. Revillard) in G. Accornero and O. Fillieule (eds), Social Movement Studies in Europe: The State of the Art (New York: Berghahn Books, 2016).

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