Gender and Social Movement Decline

Abstract

Social movement decline is an understudied topic in social movements research. This article takes the case of the prodemocracy movement in Pinochet's Chile to focus on one aspect of movement decline: the question of what activists do at the end of their movement and, in particular, how what they do is gendered. The question of what activists do is an important one, both because activism often profoundly affects the lives of those who engage in it and because what ex-activists do can affect the societies in which they live. The author uses ethnographic data to examine what Chilean shantytown women did after their prodemocracy movement ended, demonstrating that their continued involvement with what remained of the movement, their work lives, their political attitudes and activities, their geographical mobility, and their social networks were profoundly affected by the gender regime in which they lived.