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Meaning and Structure in Social Movements: Mapping the Network of National Canadian Women's Organizations*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

Susan D. Phillips
Susan D. Phillips
Affiliation:
Carleton University
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Abstract

Social movements are conceived of as networks that provide structures within which organizations negotiate meaning through the construction of collective identities. Network analysis is applied as a method for mapping the relationship among 33 national Canadian women's organizations. Results show that these diverse groups form an expansive, but loosely coupled, network that is bound by a collective identity of “liberalized” feminism. However, minority women tend to be marginalized within the movement and there are surprisingly few linkages with other core social movements. Intra-movement position has significant extra-movement consequences as demonstrated by the finding that network position is a highly significant predictor of the perceived effectiveness of a social movement organization.

Résumé

Les mouvements sociaux peuvent être conçus comme des réseaux qui fournissent aux organisations des structures de négociation pour la construction de léurs identités collectives. Une telle analyse en termes de réseaux est mise à profit pour l'étude des relations entre 33 organisations de femmes canadiennes. Les résultats montrent que ces groupes divers forment un réseau étendu mais lâche, fonde par un sentiment d'identité collective au féminisme libéré (liberalized). Cependant, les femmes appartenant à des groupes minoritaires tendent à être marginalisées à l'intérieur du mouvement et les liens avec d'autres mouvements sociaux sont étonnament faibles. De plus, la position occupée à l'intérieur du mouvement a des conséquences sur la position occupée à l'extérieur du mouvement. En effet, l'opinion sur l'efficacité du mouvement social est correlée avec la position occupée dans le réseau.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 24 , Issue 4 , December 1991 , pp. 755 - 782
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1991

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References

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14 There was no case in which a group was mentioned as an associate in two of the four advocacy projects that was not also listed as a group in a general working relationship.

15 A professional association is defined as an organization that admits individual persons based on their professional qualifications. Some of these associations have regulatory and disciplinary power over their members, while others do not. A professional association must be differentiated from an association of professionals who as individuals are acting collectively as advocates for a public interest beyond their private or professional interests. For instance, the Canadian Medical Association is a professional association, whereas Doctors for Choice is a public interest advocacy organization. It is recognized that many professional associations such as the Canadian Nurses Association and Teachers Federation have been important players in furthering the status of women in Canada. However, for purposes of testing a new method, the selection of groups was confined to voluntary advocacy organizations. Because social service organizations also have a different internal dynamic—the primacy of the client relationship—they, too, are excluded from the present analysis.

16 Application of these criteria led to inclusion of some groups with mixed-gender memberships because their organizational interests, namely those of pro-choice, family planning and children, were deemed to be central to women's concerns. Also included were two of the major groups from Quebec because they increasingly have been required by the federal government to be involved in national conferences and consultations.

17 For a discussion of women's organizing at the grassroots level, see Adamson, Nancy, Briskin, Linda and McPhail, Margaret, Feminist Organizing for Change: The Contemporary Women's Movement in Canada (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1988)Google Scholar.

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23 R.E.A.L. stands for Realistic, Equal and Active for Life.

24 Burt argues that R.E.A.L. Women is part of the women's movement while Erwinand Dubinsky assert that it represents a counter movement (Burt, “Women's Issues and the Women's Movement in Canada,” 139; Erwin, Lorna, “R.E.A.L. Anti-Feminism and the Welfare State,” Resources for Feminist Research 17 [1988], 147–150Google Scholar; and Dubinsky, Karen, “REAL Dangerous: The Challenge of R.E.A.L. Women,” Canadian Dimension 21 [1987], 4–7Google Scholar).

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26 It should be noted that the link between R.E.A.L. Women and the CWL is a tenuous one based primarily on their joint actions in the pro-life movement. However, the CWL remains strongly embedded in the institution of the Church and its field of action is primarily at the parish, rather than the national level.

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31 Gerlach and Hine, People, Power, Change, 33–78.

32 For alternative measures of centrality see Burt, Ronald S., Toward a Structural Theory of Action (New York: Academic Press, 1982), 33–37Google Scholar; Freeman, Linton C., “Centrality in Social Networks: Conceptual Clarification,” Social Networks 1 (1979), 215–239CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Knoke, David and Kuklinski, J. H., Network Analysis (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1982)Google Scholar.

33 The native women's groups, NWAC and IWA, have path distances of 93 and 64, respectively; the disabled women's group, DAWN, has a distance index of 63; the visibility minority groups, CBW and NOIVMW, have distances of 60 and 61; the first-wave groups of the NCW and FWIC have indices of 75 and 83.

34 A t-test of the number of linkages held by feminist (second-wave) versus non-feminist (first-wave) groups (p>.05 in a one-tailed test) reveals that there is no significant difference between them. However, scrutiny of the network graph (Figure 1) illustrates that there is a difference in the target of these ties. The feminist sector of the women's movement is more connected within itself and, similarly, traditional nonfeminist organizations (such as the CFUWand NCW) are more integrated with each other than cross-linked with the feminist sector. However, the YWCA—not selfdefined as feminist in orientation—plays an important bridging role between the traditional non-feminist groups and the second-wave feminist organizations. The only strong tie linking these two sectors involves the YWCA which has ties not only with NAC, but with more specialized groups such as NAWL, LEAF and CAAWS. Moreover, the YWCA is one of only two bridges between the aboriginal women's groups and the rest of the movement.

35 Recent changes in the funding available to the FFQ illustrate the fragility of the role of bridges in a network. Conversations with representatives of NAC in December 1990 indicate that the participation of the FFQ in joint advocacy projects has greatly declined in the past year due to severe cuts in their operating budget.

36 Granovetter, “The Strength of Weak Ties,” 1366.

37 Rosenthal et al., “Social Movements and Network Analysis,” 1051.

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40 This supports the case made by Jill Vickers that native women increasingly relate more to the movement of aboriginal peoples than to the women's movement (Vickers, Jill M., “Bending the iron Law of Oligarchy: Debates on the Feminization of Organization and Political Process in the English Canadian Women's Movement 1970–88,” Institute of Canadian Studies, Carleton University [unpublished paper. 1989], 1Google Scholar).

41 This substantiates the point made by Burt that Quebec women's groups have relatively greater involvement with the labour movement than do groups in English Canada. (See Burt, “Women's Issues and the Women's Movement in Canada,” 146–47.)

42 For a discussion of the linkages between the women's movement and the peace movement in Britain, see Coote, Anna and Pattullo, Polly, Power and Prejudice Women & Politics (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1990), 119–127Google Scholar, and Kirk, Gwyn, “Our Greenham Common: Not Just a Place But a Movement,” in Harris, Adrienne and King, Ynestra, eds., Rocking the Ship of Slate: Toward a Feminist Peace Politics (Boulder: Westview Press, 1989), 263–280Google Scholar.

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45 The responses for all 44 public officials are aggregated for each group such that there is one additive score for each of the 33 groups on the measure of perceived effectiveness. This rating is independent of the degree of support or affinity that the respondent has toward the organization and its goals, but implicitly relates the performance of women's groups to other interest groups with which public officials have had contact. Some public officials, for example, said that they fundamentally disagreed with the goals and ideology of a group, but nevertheless thought that the group was effective in getting its message into the policy-making system.

46 In analysis, budget figures are multiplied by .001 in order to avoid correlations of very large numbers with small ones.

47 These results accord with a similar analysis of perceived community influence of local US volunteer associations conducted by Knoke and Wood, in which effectiveness was found to be strongly related to interorganizational position (Knoke and Wood, Organized for Action, 187).

48 It is interesting to note that age of the organization has no significant relationship with either network position or financial resources. The correlation of age of the group with relative centrality is .071 and with budget is .153.