How to Manage Movement Resources? Lessons from the Argentinian Women's Movement

Since the emergence of the Ni Una Menos collective in 2015, the Argentinian women's movement gained recognition. The society voiced its concerns about women's rights, such as femicide, sexual education, reproductive, economic rights and more, during mass protests all over the country. Importantly, the Argentinian women’s movement is an example of a successful social movement, as it led to the legalization of abortion in 2020. Moreover, the inclusivity of the movement could be observed, for example, in its incorporation of an intersectional approach to gender discrimination and a horizontal organizational structure. In turn, the situation regarding women's rights in Poland is different, the 2020 Constitutional Tribunal's ruling led to an almost total ban on abortion and despite social unrest, the situation has not changed thus far.

In the present paper, I propose an analysis of factors contributing to the Argentinian women’s movement’s success by referring to resource mobilization theory. I then contrast these results with an analysis of the way movement resources are mobilized within the Polish women's movement. Specifically, the research question formed in this project was how women’s organizations mobilized different types of resources (moral, cultural, socio- organizational, human, and material) to support the women’s movement. Moreover, I also focused on the way specific resources were mobilized (self-production, aggregation, co-optation/appropriation, and patronage), also considering the type of organization in question (autonomous, associative, and directed). To answer these questions, I draw on results from ethnographic research conducted between 2015 and 2024 – ethnographic observations, semi-structured interviews with leaders of 9 Argentinian and 3 Polish women’s organizations, interviews with local informants, and an analysis of manifestos and statistical data about the situation of women in Argentina and Poland. By emphasising the role of women’s organizations, the present findings offer a new erspective on the process of achieving social movements’ goals.