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Over three decades ago, Judith Stacey and Barrie Thorne (1985) argued that gender was the “missing revolution” in sociology. Doug McAdam (1992) echoed their call, focusing on social movements and asking scholars to consider gender as a factor in movements. Since the 1990s, social movement studies have begun to answer that call with an increase in gender scholarship, particularly focusing on women in movements. Feminist scholars argued that all social movements, regardless of whether or not they agitate for gender equality, operate within gendered institutions and settings and are engaged in the social construction of gender. This scholarly progress has come in two waves, with the first focused on understanding women’s social movement activism (Whittier 2007). However, as gender scholars expanded their research beyond the study of women, the second wave began. It was then that scholars began to consider the topic of masculinity and intersectionality in all movements.

As a result, gender scholarship has expanded social movement theories. For example, Judith Gerson and Kathy Peiss (1985) detailed how a gendered identity is formed through the development of a gender consciousness, the negotiation of gender boundaries and the interaction with “the other.” Verta Taylor and Nancy Whittier (1992) drew on this scholarship to illustrate how activist identities are created within movement communities and how they are constantly being constructed as the external environment, and group norms, beliefs, and goals shift. Relatedly, scholars have drawn on the dynamics of women’s movements to advance theorizing on social movements in general (Reger and Taylor 2002; Taylor and Whittier 1995; Staggenborg and Taylor 2005; Taylor 1999). Studies of the U.S. women’s movement have shaped social movement theory in multiple ways. Investigations of feminist culture prompted new understandings of movement continuity and change. Scholars of feminism articulated important concepts for all social movements, such as the existence of multiple activist identities, distinctive movement cultures, and networks of activists not visible to mainstream society. All of these concepts moved the study of social movements away from a strictly structural and resource-focused analysis. This was brought in part by feminist activists studying the movement around them, a dynamic seen in other movements such as the student, anti-war, peace, and anti-nuclear movements. In studying the movements around them, feminist researchers could also see how a movement could shape society, and how, as gender issues shifted in movements, so did the focus and goals of movements. In sum, the study of a gendered social movement such as U.S. feminism has influenced the social movement theories and concepts that can be applied to all social movements.