Women's embodied political performances in Israel's pro-democracy protest: A typology

This article develops a typology of women’s embodied protest performances within Israel’s 2022–2023 pro-democracy movement. Drawing on 11 months of ethnographic and digital fieldwork, we identify five protest “body types”—the maternal body, the surrogate body, the fighting body, the defiant body, and the undressed body—and analyze each intersectionally through the prisms of reaffirmation or contestation of gender norms, spatial positioning within protests, colors and the emotions they mobilize, sonic practices, and temporality. Our typology contributes to feminist and social movement scholarship by systematically categorizing embodied performances and foregrounding the body as a central medium through which protest is performed, interpreted, and contested—particularly in polarized spaces where visibility and legitimacy are shaped by intersecting structures of ethnicity and status. With implications extending beyond Israel, this tool is transferable to other settings facing rising authoritarianism where women’s activism is both urgent and constrained.