Women's movements and democratic transition in Chile, Brazil, East Germany, and Poland

In democratic transitions, when will women mobilize on the basis of gender identity? While women in many countries have responded to transitions to democracy by mobilizing along gender lines, in most of the transitions in Central and East Europe women who participated in dissident movements did not. There are three significant causes of women's mobilization: resources, framing of issues, and inclusion or exclusion from the agenda-setting process within the opposition. Women's preexisting formal or informal networks lead to gender-based organizing. Direct contact with the international feminist community allows women to frame their situation as women and to organize separately from men. And exclusion from the agenda-setting process affords them an opportunity to unite along shared gender identity.