‘We Are No Longer the First to Lead the Dance’: Analysing Intergroup Conflicts Within the French-Speaking Belgian Feminist Movement

   

Abstract

Conflicts within the feminist struggle are widely publicised and studied in gender studies and sociological research. However, to our knowledge, research has yet to address the social-psychological roots of these conflicts. We aimed to explore intergroup dynamics within the French-speaking Belgian feminist movement through a social-psychological lens. To do so, we conducted a reflexive thematic analysis on 18 semi-structured interviews with French-speaking Belgian feminists. Results suggest that, while feminists generally perceive ideological differences and debates positively, perceived ideological conflicts also arise between subgroups within the feminist movement. In addition, members of different subgroups may also compete over material resources (i.e., subsidies) allowed to the feminist movement, although participants did not perceive such competition as a source of conflict. Finally, results suggest that members of different feminist subgroups might compete to be perceived as the most prototypical subgroup of the feminist movement (i.e., the ‘true’ feminists). Nevertheless, and fortunately, cooperation between subgroups also seems to prevail in the feminist movement. Our research led to hypotheses on three social-psychological processes that might lead to internal conflicts: perceived symbolic threat (i.e., ideological conflicts), perceived realistic threat (i.e., perceived competition over material resources) and perceived competition over prototypicality. We advocate that further studies test these hypotheses to improve our understanding of internal conflicts within the feminist movement and social movements in general.