Women Make Waves A Pendulum Swing between Dutch transnational and domestic abortion activism

The article explores how and why the activism of the Dutch initiative Women on Waves (WoW) represents a distinctive mode of feminist organizing for abortion and women’s reproductive rights. The analysis focuses on the organizational characteristics, strategies, action repertoire and dynamics of WoW, as a women’s movement-supporting organization founded by an entrepreneurial activist physician. By revisiting (feminist) social movement theories and concepts, including typologies of social movement organizations and their roles, NGO-ization, the boomerang effect of leveraging international political opportunities through and for domestic activism, shopping for receptive political venues and the cyclical pattern of contentious activism, I highlight several distinct features of WoW’s activism. Drawing on WoW, I propose three concepts relevant for analyzing the dynamics of (feminist) social movement organizations: the “ignition effect” of transnational activism that exposes the need for domestic activism and strategies that involve “level switching” and “geographic venue shopping” to leverage and effect changes in political opportunities and threats and anticipate chances of success.