Social Movement Continuity: The Women's Movement in Abeyance

TLDR

The article develops concepts using social movement and organization theory to explain continuity in social movements. Grounded in data on women’s rights activism from 1945 to the 1960s, the authors outline a process of social movement abeyance and identify five key characteristics—temporality, purposive commitment, exclusiveness, centralization, and culture—that enable groups to persist in nonreceptive political climates. Abeyance structures serve as organizational and ideological bridges linking successive waves of activism by the same challenging group.

Abstract

This article uses social movement and organization theory to develop a set of concepts that help explain social movement continuity. The theory is grounded in new data on women's rights activism from 1945 to the 1960s that challenge the traditional view that the American women's movement died after the suffrage victory in 1920 and was reborn in the 1960s. This case delineates a process in social movements that allows challenging groups to continue in nonreceptive political climates through social movement abeyance structures. Five characteristics of movement abeyance structures are identified and elaborated: temporality, purposive commitment, exclusiveness, centralization, and culture. Thus, social movement abeyance structures provide organizational and ideological bridges between different upsurges of activism by the same challenging group.