Understanding Women's Protests: Double Standards, Support, and Protest Tactics

• In Event: Protest, Repression and Violence

Abstract

In recent decades, women-only and women-led protest movements have gained popularity across the world. Often, these protests are met with intense social backlash. This paper studies the factors driving this backlash and develops a theory explaining how this backlash can influence protesters’ use of violent protest tactics. Our analysis consists of three parts. First, using a survey experiment, we document a double standard in which violent protest tactics disproportionately decrease public support for women’s protests. Next, motivated by this result, we develop a simple formal model in which protesters decide whether to employ violent tactics, and then the government — partially based on the levels of public support for the protest — chooses whether to accommodate their demands. We identify conditions under which greater female participation in protests should decrease the likelihood of violence. Finally, we provide strong support for the model's expectations using data on protest events in over 47 countries during 2000-2015.

Authors

• Sergio J Ascencio, University of Essex

• Han Il Chang, New York University

• Shiyi Xia, University of Aarhus