Women, Gender, Feminism: Marginalization at the Inception of the World Social Forum

The World Social Forum (WSF) is a bi-annual meeting space for the global justice movement that facilitates the coordination of worldwide events and protests around a variety of social justice issues. I argue that although the principles of the WSF are based on feminist methods of participation, the research presented here demonstrates that women, gender, and feminism were marginalized in the program and content at the forum's inception. Empirically the paper presents the structure of programming and a quantitative examination of women's and feminist groups' participation of the first years of the WSF process. I consider the thematic development of the WSF and role of information sharing and intersectionality as feminist principles were incorporated into the WSF. I refer to various theoretical perspectives on gender including feminist political economy, post-colonialism, and queer theory to make sense of feminist participation and marginalization at the World Social Forum.