The Impact of Globalization on Women's and Non‐Women's Protest*

Abstract

Objectives We advance hypotheses on the extent to which the three main aspects of globalization—economic, political, and social—fuel mass protest and delineate how these effects can be especially instrumental in understanding collective mass mobilization among a historically disadvantaged group, women. Methods We use new and updated data on anti‐government protest to examine the covariates of protest intensity cross‐nationally over time. Results Results from the data analysis indicate that while political globalization is associated with reduced women's protest, social globalization is associated with increased women's and non‐women's protest. Further, economic globalization has somewhat divergent effects on women's and non‐women's protest. Conclusions Results from our thorough analysis of the three main aspects of globalization highlight the varying effects that different dimensions of globalization have on political protest. Our study offers a unique analysis of the factors associated with protest by women and compares it to other types of protest.

Maternal Mortality and Women’s Political Power

“…We compute the proportion of women's protests using countrylevel panel data on women's protests and total protests from Bell et al (2019) the 27/10/2020. When generating ratios of women to male outcomes these are Winsorized at the 1 st and 99 th percentiles to avoid outliers in cases where the denominator is very small.…”

The Global Diffusion of the #MeToo Movement

“…Most studies focus on women's participation in North America and Western Europe only (Costain 1992; Soule et al 1999). The studies that do exist, however, often find very similar patterns of women's participation in protest to that of protest that does not center on women's issues, especially when compared with other historically disadvantaged groups (Murdie and Peksen 2015; Bell et al 2019).…”

“…Repression and injustice can mobilize individuals to take to the streets. Research on women's protest has similarly found that a lack of respect for women's rights often accompanies mobilization (Bell, Murdie, and Peksen 2019; Costain 1992; Murdie and Peksen 2015).…”

“…Many studies on the role of globalization in protest focus on how the informational resources provided by globalization may aid in mobilization. For example, the spread of information and interpersonal connections can help with coordination and reduce duplication of effort, allowing country-level movements to learn from each other and share resources (Bell, Murdie, and Peksen 2019). Globalization can also make it easier for transnational nongovernmental organizations to be involved within a country, increasing the ability of local actors to coordinate and plan protests (Keck and Sikkink 1998; Murdie and Peksen 2015; Olzak and Tsutsui 1998).…”

A Ticking Time Bomb: Restrictions on Abortion Rights and Physical Integrity Rights

“…Finally, we find much auxiliary evidence concerning the indirect mechanism or middle step in our theoretical logic. Abortion rights restrictions limit citizen trust in government (Haerpfer et al 2021) and reduce non-violent protest (Bell, Murdie, and Peksen 2019) (Williams and Whitten 2012). Panel A shows that a country with the median respect for abortion rights (a score of 4 on the CAI #1 measure) is expected to increase their respect for social group equality in civil liberties over time while countries with lower respect of abortion rights are either supposed to stay relatively constant (the score of 3 on the CAI #1 measure) or diminish their respect for social group equality over time.…”