Vehicles for Empowerment

Abstract This paper considers organizations that empower by examining feminist movement groups. The contemporary feminist movement has generated a wide variety of organizations which provide social services to women and act as vehicles for social change. Yet many of these organizations are short-lived. Factors that affect the structure and goals of feminist movement organizations are examined in order to develop a theoretically-based understanding of why some organizations thrive while others disintegrate. The contingencies under which feminist movement organizations maintain themselves, transform into other sorts of organizations, or decline and dissolve are described, and strategies for managing conflict are discussed. In particular, the paper emphasizes the organizational consequences of ideology, and concludes with a consideration of the role of organizations within a social movement.