ABSTRACT
This chapter delves deeper into the spaces of gender performances, identities and relations at the individual level of mobilization. Underlying the awareness level, it attempts to pinpoint diverse taken-for-granted assumptions about gender and alternative expressions of femininity and masculinity “inside” and “outside” the space of activism. The empirical analysis focuses on the understanding of the biographical histories of activists in order to uncover alternative choices of cultural meanings and strategic tastes. It is manifest, as activists have expressed through their accounts, that gender identities gain in their saliency and centrality through their involvement in the respective movements, although following different trajectories. Evidence suggests in addition how different aspects of gendered structures shape individual and collective practices of doing gender by providing them with meaning, beliefs and social practices. I underline in the chapter the interplay between embodied gendered constrains and different gender understandings, opposing individualist versus collectivist perspectives. In the context of protest, these views activate in turn a number of cognitive processes of gender consciousness and moral resilience that fuel different social performances, ranging from expressive to strategic, either to reproduce or contest gender hierarchies.
