The Long-Term Impacts of 1970’s Feminist Activism in Various Contexts

Abstract

Personal and biographical consequences of feminist activism are effects on the life-course of individuals who have participated or been exposed to feminist activities, effects that are at least in part due to involvement/exposition in those activities. The proposed section invites scholars to examine feminist involvements’ socio-biographical effects, that is, ways in which feminist commitment generates or modifies dispositions to act, think, and perceive, either consistent with or in contrast with the results of previous socialization. In this panel, we would like to address the following questions: - How disentangle the long term effects of feminist involvement in terms of sexual freedom (that may have had different meanings for men and women), sexual orientation (that may have had different meaning for heterosexuals compared to lesbian and gay activists), and intersectionality ? - How did the experience of alienation in leftist movements of the 1970s did generate awareness of an unequal division of activist work into gendered social movement organizations ? With what consequences in subsequent commitments ? - How did the slogan “the personal is politic” did translate into activist’s life course in terms of political involvement, family and professional life? - Besides women experience involved in Feminist movements, what can we say about the biographical experience of feminist men facing the call for a transformation of gender roles? The section chairs will particularly favour proposals that are grounded in empirical data and that centrally address epistemological and methodological questions. Considering the broad range of methods available in different disciplines to work on biographical consequences of activism (life and oral history, prosopography, archival research, surveys, life calendars and sequence analysis, prospective or retrospective longitudinal studies, etc.) the section will be largely opened to scholars working in the fields of political sociology as well as sociology and history to participate.

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