Vulnerability and empowerment on the ground: Activist perspectives from the global feminisms project

Abstract

Vulnerability is a standard criterion used by state and non-governmental organizations to identify groups of people in need of protection or support. Over the past two decades, however, this notoriously ill-defined and potentially stigmatizing term has been subjected to scrutiny by researchers, service providers, and theorists across multiple disciplines. This study examines the relevance of vulnerability to the ways international feminist activists who were interviewed between 2003 and 2019 for the Global Feminisms Project (GFP) described their struggles for women's rights in various settings over the past 50 years. Citing examples from nine countries, we show that these activists rarely used the term vulnerable, and never to classify groups of people. Instead, they frequently explained how particular groups were subjected to precarious conditions, and how they resisted subjugation, within multiple layers of gendered social relations and political structures. Many activists connected their locally-grounded work to global historical processes, emphasizing particularly the impact of neo-liberalism. Although using different vocabularies, these analyses resonate with work by bioethicists and feminist/queer theorists who reject the use of vulnerability as a classificatory term but embrace it as a tool for analyzing subjugation, building solidarity, and challenging neo-liberal conceptions of individual autonomy.