Democratizing from below - How the Portuguese Feminist Movement Trajectory helps build the Portuguese Democracy

The Portuguese feminist movement emerges in the context of democratization the country experienced in the mid-1970s. Several feminist activists were politically involved in the underground resistance to the dictatorship, while others joined in the movement because they felt disaffected with political parties, unions, and other movement organizations that did not address their feminist agendas. Most feminist organizations were created in the late 1970s and activists find their movement strategies intertwined to assessments of what agendas to prioritize when a democratic project is still fragile. By the early 1980s, several movement organizations and collectives had settled around the movement’s main agenda: reproductive rights, particularly, abortion decriminalization. The abortion issue was a source of unity for the movement, and it was through this main agenda that the movement began to take shape. As the 1980s progressed, abortion decriminalization became the movement's most salient grievance and a source of convergence for disparate movement organizations. The fight for abortion rights culminated with the 1984 abortion decriminalization law, which albeit its restrictive grounds, was perceived as a victory and led to the demobilization of the movement in the 1990s. The feminist movement would gain visibility again in the early 2000s in connection, yet again, with the struggle for abortion rights. Similar to what happened in the mid-1980s, various feminist organizations came together and made alliances with other political actors, to claim that the previous law was too restrictive and lacked implementation. This broad alliance coalition led to the legalization of abortion in 2007. Since then, the movement has grown in strength and has become more diverse, both in demands and in membership, which contributed to revitalizing the movement. The political struggle of the feminist movement around reproductive rights, and later, around domestic violence, illustrates much more than movement agendas and outcomes. The mobilization around these issues illustrates how feminist movements made democracy work for them, how they operate within an ever-changing democratic environment, and ultimately how that mobilization contributed, from below, to strengthen democracy. Their use of distinct strategies and tactics, the inclusion and mobilization of previously excluded actors into the polity, and their broad coalitions have all contributed to the quality of the overall democratization process.