The Professionalization of the Feminist Movement

The need to deconstruct heteropatriarchal, elite, white knowledge and to reconstruct knowledge from peripheral locations and marginalized experiences gave the impetus to feminist knowledge production in informal groups and NGOs, but also in research centers and university programs. The expertise acquired is used to develop a feminist practice of work and feeds the policy process in the context of evidence-based policymaking. Feminist knowledge serves to legitimize the claims of the feminist movement and their policy recommendations in the official political arena, but also their relationship with the movement’s base and to nourish their grassroots actions, such as raising-awareness campaigns. The build-up of a feminist professional practice of work stems from a web of interactions among actors—professionals within and outside the movement, activists and volunteers, and pro-bono professionals that shape the process of professionalization and the identity of feminist movement professionals. The recruitment of experts from outside the movement, coupled with a high turnover, amplified by the logic of project-based work was associated with an important risk of depoliticization. Activists were concerned about losing the critical and political grid of analysis, driven by the transformation of NGO work into a job like any other and addressing issues in a technical manner, reflective of the managerial style of neoliberal governance.