About the Women’s March National Protest

The Women’s March was a national protest organized in January 2017. The primary goal of the campaign was to promote human rights policy and laws, in particular women’s rights (Moss and Avril 614). Specifically, the Women’s March campaign championed health justice, social inclusion, abortion rights, freedom of worship and the rights of workers. Any of the women’s march marches and demonstrations attacked Donald Trump soon after his victory and reelection as U.S. President. The formation of this movement was largely driven by the statement that Trump made, as well as by the positions he took, most of which were not only considered offensive but also anti-women (Moss and Avril 616). According to Moss and Avril, The policy platform for the Women’s March movement is known as “Unity Principles,” comprising of the belief that gender justice equates to economic justice and racial justice (614).

The first protest planned by the Women’s March was in Washington, D.C. The protest is referred to as women’s march on Washington. In view of the protest organizers, the demonstration was intended to send a bold message to the new administration and to the world at large, that the rights of women are human rights (Fisher, Dawn and Rashawn 14). This protest, held in Washington, DC, was streamed live on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. During Women’s March protests, the crowds were peaceful, and consequently, no arrests were made in New York City, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Seattle, and Chicago, where approximately two million protesters matched collectively.

Following the protests, the coordinators of the Women’s March on Washington recorded and posted the ten actions of the movement, for the first one hundred days of the campaign for the joint feminism activism to maintain the momentum of the movement. During the Women’s March on Washington, organizers stated that their movement was not targeting Donald Trump but rather, was a proactive movement about the rights of women (Donaldson 8). In light of this argument, the organizers referred to the movement as a stand on human rights and social justice, covering issues like ethnicity, religion, race, gender, healthcare, and immigration.

The Women’s March is considered an intersectional feminism, owing to its objectives. Intersectional feminism is described as a form of feminism, which seeks to fight for the rights of women, and to empower women, with serious considerations of the differences among women, encompassing different identities on the basis of sexuality, religion, radicalization, economic status, language, and nationality (Fisher, Dawn and Rashawn 17). What is more, intersectional feminism addresses the ways in which assertions made against women can serve to marginalize or silence females by universalizing the assertions against relatively privileged women. Similarly, the Women’s March is committed to fighting for the rights of women by advocating policies that seek to empower women while also fighting for their rights (Fisher, Dawn and Rashawn 14). Just like intersectional feminisms, the Women’s March movement stresses healthcare reforms, racial equality, reproductive rights, freedom of religion, as well as worker’s rights. Additionally, both intersectional feminism and the Women’s March movement seeks to understand how the overlapping identities of women such as class, race, religion, sexual orientation, and ethnicity impact the way they encounter discrimination and oppression.

Overall, the Women’s March is an international movement that endeavors to fight for the rights of women and to empower them by proactively calling for reforms in a wide range of issues that affect women across the globe. The movement can be considered an intersectional feminism since it shares the same objectives as those of intersectional feminism.

Works Cited

Donaldson, Mary Grace. ”Millennial Voices from the Women’s March.” Fellowship 81.1-6 (2017): 7-9. Retrieved from

https://search.proquest.com/openview/8b1c6c3a2b8cde9556a15da465d03ad6/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=2819

Fisher, Dana R., Dawn M. Dow, and Rashawn Ray. ”Intersectionality takes it to the streets: Mobilizing across diverse interests for the Women’s March.” Science Advances 3.9 (2017): eaao1390. Retrieved from

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5606706/

Moss, Pamela, and Avril Maddrell. ”Emergent and divergent spaces in the Women’s March: the challenges of intersectionality and inclusion.” (2017): 613-620. Retrieved from

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0966369X.2017.1351509