Introduction
Social movements many of which are grass-root based but have grown to the national and international levels exist for various reasons. They have goals and agendas that they try to promote and sell the policies and agendas to the public while others exist to preserve and maintain the very vision and mission of the mother social movement (Altbach, 2007). They exist in form of activist organization that are organized bureaucratically or organized in such away that members interact with the management of the groups. Women’s Lib is a feminist movement that exists in southern state of Arizona. This is a women’s faction or women’s freedom that engages in a succession of campaigns that are directed towards realizing changes or alterations in a number of women related issues like the domestic violence, sexual annoyance, equal reimburse, voting rights, sexual hostility, maternity leave and reproductive rights. These are some of the goals that the movement was formed to articulate for. I chose to talk about Women’s Lib because it has come out to be the most active social movement and has the largest following compared to other groups (Altbach, 2007).
Main body
According to Treanor (2002) the history of the movement indicates that Women’s Lib came into existence in the late 1980s at the time when the second wave of the feminist movement coming to an end. There was also active articulation for political equality. Women were expectant to look exhaustively on their individual lives and how they could enthusiastically politicized them in order to reflect on a configuration of power that is sexist. Women’s Lib came into existence at the time when feminist activities were very high in the country and there were many groups formed that were pro feminist movements (Altbach, 2007). The central role was to crusade against the political and cultural differences. Some of the common leaders like Hong Kingston and Chela Sandoval championed specific issues like discrimination, race and gender.
The organizational of the movement is flexible and devolves in nature such that the member of the movement can easily interact with the management. “Our organization is flexible and we can interact with our members easily.” These sentiments were echoed by Campbell the head of communications in the movement. At the national level, there is the top management that made up president elected by the members in general annual assembly help annually. She further elaborated how the president is assisted by the seven other congress persons elected from the seven counties in the state to run the movement. The movement has branches at the county level and the grass-root levels. This allows for affiliate groups to join the movement at grass-root levels while also allowing registration of new members at the grass-root levels. Currently Women’s Lib has over two million registered members while the unregistered stands at a million. This are however projected to increase annually with more that hundred thousand new members registered annually.
To measure its success, the Women’s lib has achieved key social changes that it will remain remembered for. “We shall be remembered for championing cultural and political changes.” She further noted. Some of them include the right for a woman to initiate divorce case and the right to divorce itself. Women can now make personal decision on matters regarding pregnancy on whether to use contraceptives or not and whether to abort or not. The other key right that women fought for was the right to own property. All these changes affected and changed the western society. The other social change that is used to measure the success of the movement is the wide employment for women. More women got employed and not only did they have employment but also given wages that are more equitable.
To promote its cause of making sure that there is cultural equity especially on matters like equal pay, domestic and sexual violence, the movement engages itself in a number of activities that are all geared at the above goal. The movement organizes sensitization meetings with women both working and those not working. These meetings are done semiannually and normally addressed by re-known female activists. These meetings act at the same time act as motivational as well inspirational moments for the women. The other activity that Women’s Lib is involved in is the grass-root campaigns it is involved to woo more people to the movement and at the same time encourage the already existing members to activity participate in the activities of the movement. To make this succeeds the leadership involves every member in the mobilization process.
Conclusion
According to Campbell, the person concern with communication in the movement the future of the movement is promising as they plan to expand to other states. The movement also plans to strengthen the grass-root bases by registering more people and creating structures to allow affiliate groups to easily join the movement. The movement also plans to look for strategic partners and sponsors who can finance the activities of the movement. This is vital as the movement current service on well-wishers and donors to finance its activities. In conclusion it can be argued that the movement has achieved a lot in terms of women rights issues and the movement needs to be embraced in our society.
Reference
Altbach, Gerald. (2007). From Feminism to Liberation. Piscataway: Transaction Publishers.
Treanor, Norton. (2002). the feminist movement. Farmington Hills: Greenhaven Press.