The “Women’s Movement”: Raising Questions about Meaning and Terminology

JVF Conference Papers

What does the “women’s movement” mean? What can be defined as a “women’s movement? Which connotations accompany the term “women’s movement”? Questions like these are crucial in dealing with the phenomena called women’s movements. In my dissertation project I was confronted with issues of denominating and categorizing women’s organizations within political parties in Austria, as well as the Bund Österreichischer Frauenvereine after 1945. The term “women’s movement” is significant for my project in two different ways: First, the term constitutes an important reference to the sources I am analyzing.

As I argue, the women’s movement is an important symbol to which these partisan organizations relate themselves. These references are significant for the self-conception of these organizations; and not by accident, they constitute a popular narrative in them. Secondly, the term plays an important role in how I denominate women’s groups in my own work.

Download pdf