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“This is What a Feminist
Looks Like”
–Movement Slogan
In the new political climate of the 1980s, alongside economic and social changes such as the rise of the dual-income family and women’s increasing participation in the paid labor market, the women’s movement fractured. Even while drawing on hard-won gains, emerging activists pushed for new ideologies and forms of action. More than gender equivalence, advocates emphasized women’s particular needs in tandem with their race, class, and sexual identities. Grassroots collectives in the 1990s employed underground messaging campaigns—not marching—to expose structural sexism. In addition, women of color and trans women have fought to make intersectionality—the recognition of interlocking forms of discrimination—central to modern feminist activism, fostering a different kind of collectivity through diversity. Today, online platforms have altered what it means to come together, enabling participation even without physical presence. Yet the impetus to show up endures, drawing record-breaking crowds in new forums like the 2017 Women’s March. Through the vote and beyond it, women continue mobilizing to make their voices heard.
Issue-Driven Marches
Since the 1980s, grassroots groups have increasingly coalesced around specific issues and identities. In a rapidly changing world, many women looked to marches for moments of solidarity. They have stressed the importance of visibility, recognition, and respect. For example, since 1993, annual Dyke Marches have celebrated lesbian activism as an important facet of gay liberation. In 1997, responding to the ways the Million Man March foregrounded African American men in the struggle for racial justice, the grassroots-organized Million Woman March stressed Black female unity, healing, and empowerment. Meanwhile, movements against abortion and the ERA, and in defense of traditional marriage and families, have also continued to grow. Women have played critical roles in organizing protests for criminal justice reform, indigenous and environmental causes, and trans rights. The 2017 Women’s March united many of these divergent causes into a single protest.
March
for Women's Equality, Women's Lives sash, 1989
Fabric
Schlesinger
Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University
Hand in Hand: The Domestic Employers
Network and the National Domestic Workers Alliance
Fair Care Pledge mailer, 2019
Collection of Anna Danziger Halperin
Based on the
credo that “carework makes all work possible,” domestic work organizing has
been a growing form of women’s collective action, which in recent years
includes marches, legislative lobbying, protests, innovative technologies, and
more. This “Fair Care Pledge” represents a cross-class solidarity-building
project between domestic workers and their employers. Operating much like a
consciousness-raising group of the 1960s, its organizers hope to raise
awareness alongside improving working conditions.
Dorothea
Jacobson-Wenzel
Women walking in NOW
March for Pro-Choice, 1989
Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute,
Harvard University
Women Unite, Take Back the Night, 1995
Barnard
Archives and Special Collections
Hat from the Million Woman March, 1997
New-York
Historical Society
I
was there! pin-back button,
1993
Metal
Gift of Caroline R. Helmuth, 2011.22.2
Grassroots and
Girl-Positive
Artistic Expression
In the early 1990s, feminist collective Riot Grrrl relied on high-energy music and self-made publications called zines to share messages of girl-positive empowerment. Born in reaction to the sexism of the punk music scene, the movement translated punk’s DIY attitude to feminist thought, encouraging girls to express their creative and political individuality. Even so, collectivity and collaboration mattered. As an underground movement, Riot Grrrl helped recast feminism as a cool form of self-expression, appealing especially to young, white, middle-class women who had previously rejected feminism as unnecessary and outdated. The Guerrilla Girls employed an even more underground strategy to expose sexism and racism in the art world. Wearing gorilla masks to carry out subversive messaging campaigns, group members used art and humor to highlight the underrepresentation of women and people of color in museums and galleries—in the process demonstrating the continuing power of group-based action.
Guerrilla
Girls
There’s a Tragedy on Broadway, ca. 1998
Courtesy of
Donna Kaz, aka Aphra Behn, Guerrilla Girls On Tour
Founded
in 1985 by self-described female activist artists, the Guerrilla Girls choose
to remain anonymous. They don gorilla masks and adopt the names of deceased
women artists, protecting their own identities as they carry out subversive
messaging campaigns in New York City and beyond. Still active today, only a few
Guerrilla Girls have chosen to unmask, among them Donna Kaz, whose original
mask is displayed here.
Original Guerrilla Girl mask worn by Guerrilla Girl “Aphra Behn”, 1997-2007
Rubber,
fake fur
Courtesy
of Donna Kaz, aka Aphra Behn, Guerrilla Girls On Tour
Bikini
Kill
Girl
Power, vol. 2, 1991
Barnard
Zine Library, Barnard College
#MeToo:
Activism
in the Internet Age
In late 2017, hundreds of thousands of women flooded social media with the hashtag #MeToo, giving testimony of their experiences with sexual violence and harassment. The bravery of one person speaking out against her abuser inspired another, and then another, ultimately cascading into an unstoppable movement. The phrase, originated by activist Tarana Burke in 2006 to highlight the pervasiveness of sexual abuse, emerged in full force following the exposure of predatory behavior by powerful men stretching back decades. Together, women known and unknown, and bridging generational divides, have forged a moment both intensely individual and powerfully collective. The #MeToo movement exemplifies how technology has remade the meaning of collectivity. As early as the 1990s, feminists harnessed the internet’s connective potential, using listservs, blogs, and messaging boards to build energy and organize impromptu in-person, event-driven demonstrations. As ever-faster communication becomes the norm, the tools for forging solidarity have expanded—providing more proverbial microphones to amplify a panoply of voices.
Sarah Atwood
Yale
"I march against. . ."
embroidered sign carried at Women's
March on Chicago, 2017
Gift of
Sarah Atwood Yale, 2019.69
Lori
Steinberg
Pussyhat worn at Women's March on
Washington, 2017
Wool
Gift
of Lori Steinberg, 2019.67.1
NOW mousepad,
undated
Fabric
and rubber
Schlesinger
Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University
Global Women’s Organizing
Women’s activists have long organized across borders. American and British suffragists built relationships with one another beginning in the nineteenth century. The Inter-American Commission of Women was formed in the 1920s to link together women’s rights advocates across the Americas. Black nationalist women were integral to Pan-African and anti-colonial movements of the twentieth century. Activists and policymakers gathered in Mexico City to celebrate 1975 as International Women’s Year and build transnational networks for a conference dubbed at the time as the “greatest consciousness-raising event in history.” The scale of these movements shifted as “globalization” became a watchword of the post-Cold War era. American feminist advocacy around global issues became more visible, particularly with the spotlight on the 1995 UN World Conference on Women in Beijing. Over thirty thousand activists from nongovernmental organizations across the world gathered to collaborate, build personal and institutional networks, and forge transnational coalitions. Changing digital technologies combined with this in-person forum helped bridge the isolation grassroots advocates had faced, instead tackling shared goals collectively.
Beijing
World Conference on Women banner,
1995
Schlesinger
Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University
Laurène
Boglio
“Signs of Progress”: Resister, 2019
Jane
Walker by Johnnie Walker
Collected sign: We
Will Not Be Silent, 2019
Jane Walker
by Johnnie Walker
Collected sign:
If You Don’t Fight For All Women, 2019
Jane Walker
by Johnnie Walker
Monica
Ahanonu
“Signs of Progress”:
You. Me. Them. All of Us., 2019
Jane Walker
by Johnnie Walker
William
de Lannoy
“Signs of Progress”: Be The Face of Change,
2019
Jane
Walker by Johnnie Walker
Justin
Teodoro
Collected sign: We Should All Care, 2019
Jane
Walker by Johnnie Walker
We Make America
Liberty
torch, 2017
Gift of We Make America, 2019.68.3
Black/Latino/LGBTQ... Lives Matter, 2017
Patricia D. Klingenstein Library,
New-York Historical Society
Cicely Reich
I am not free so long as any
woman is unfree, 2017
Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, New-York
Historical Society
They Thought They Could Bury Us, 2017
Patricia D. Klingenstein Library,
New-York Historical Society
We All Belong Here sign from Muslim Ban protest,
2017
Courtesy
of Dayna Bealy
Lady Parts Justice League,
A Woman’s Place is in Your Face,
2017
Patricia D. Klingenstein Library,
New-York Historical Society