DOES THE GLOBAL NORTH STILL DOMINATE WOMEN'S INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZING? A NETWORK ANALYSIS FROM 1978 TO 2008*
Over the last century, women increasingly transcended national boundaries to exchange information, build solidarity, and bring change. Accounts suggest that as women's international presence expanded, the types of women who participated also shifted. During the first wave of women's movements, White Western women dominated, but over time women of the Global South increasingly organized themselves. Yet we do not know whether North-South inequalities in women's organizational membership have diminished. We collect longitudinal network data on 447 women's international nongovernmental organizations (WINGOs) and use visual tools and network measures to explore changes in the network structure from 1978 to 2008. Results suggest (1) WINGOs—while increasing in frequency—are not connecting to greater numbers of countries, (2) the North/South split in WINGO memberships does not change over time, (3) significant power differences between the North and South persist, and (4) substantial inequalities in WINGO memberships within the Global South also exist.
Contributor Notes
* We gratefully acknowledge the support of the National Science Foundation (SES-1067218 and SES-0962034). We also thank Manisha Desai, Christine Williams; participants of the Workshop on Power, Resistance, and Social Change at the University of Pittsburgh; and editor Neal Caren and four anonymous reviewers at Mobilization for providing feedback on earlier drafts of this manuscript. Previous versions of this article were presented at the 2014 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in Washington, DC, the 2013 European Conference on Politics and Gender in Barcelona, Spain, and the 2012 ISA Forum of Sociology in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
† Melanie M. Hughes is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh. Pamela Paxton is the Linda K. George and John Wilson Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. Sharon Quinsaat is Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology at Grinnell College. Nicholas Reith is a post-doctoral researcher at University of Texas at Austin.