Women Occupying Wall Street: Gender Conflict and Feminist Mobilization

Feminist organizing has moved into new terrain, including social movements not specifically focused on gender inequality.  In this chapter, we analyze the significance of gender conflict and feminist mobilization for the emergence and dynamics of the Occupy Wall Street movement.  The analysis is based on participant observation, in-depth interviews with 73 participants, and movement documents. We show that gender conflict influenced the Occupy movement’s goals, organization, tactics and strategies, giving rise to spin-off feminist mobilizations that reinvigorated feminist organizations and networks.  Our analysis focuses on three processes that were central to feminist mobilization in Occupy:  the construction of feminist collective identity, the creation of feminist free spaces, and the use of feminist bridge leaders.  We find that sexism, sexual harassment, and white male dominance were pervasive in Occupy, weakening the movement as a whole.  But gender conflict also provided a political opportunity for the revitalization and transformation of feminism.