GENDER AND RACE IN A PRO-FEMINIST, PROGRESSIVE, MIXED-GENDER, MIXED-RACE ORGANIZATION

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Abstract
Feminist researchers have urged more study of how feminist practice is actually accomplished in mixed-gender organizations. Social movement scholars have called for more attention to dynamics of gender and race in social movement organizations, especially to the challenges of maintaining internal solidarity. Based on field observations in a pro-feminist, progressive, mixed-gender, mixed-race social movement organization, this article examines organizational decision-making processes and interpersonal and group dynamics. Gendered and racialized patterns of subordination are both very much in evidence and—at the same time—actively challenged in this organization. The author argues that profeminist and progressive organizational practices and efforts to create solidarity across gender and race can exist through competing and contradictory dynamics and ongoing struggles. Complex and inconsistent dynamics around these social barriers are likely to occur in organizations more generally and need to be a subject for more research.