Protests as Democratic Ecosystems: Women’s Mobilisation in India & Mexico

• In Event: Women-ing Movements: Understanding Gendered Mobilisation in Social Movements

Abstract

Scholars and policy analysts claim we are at a time of extreme democratic decline and truncation of rights around the world. At the same time, we have also seen the incidence of some of the biggest protests in history against these issues in the last few years. Through this paper I argue that protests and social movements are strengthening alternative democratic spaces even when there is a weakening of democracy in formal institutions. Highlighting two such women-led social movements from -1) India, against discriminatory citizenship laws and 2) Mexico, on inaction by the government towards pervasive violence, I show that movements that emerged in different contexts for different causes and had different outcomes ended up creating alternative ecosystems of democracy through the course of their movement. Using qualitative methods, I highlight how the women utilise grounded networks, loosely-sturctured institutions, and horizontal organizing to create material and need-based structures of welfare, service provision, and democratic equality. Therefore, I claim that instead of turning to the state or state-based institutions to provide democracy, social movements are proof of democratic strengthening by providing grounded examples that in fact reshape formal and dominant conceptions of democratic politics.

Author

• Sinduja Raja, University of Denver