Contenu du sommaire : Hommes et femmes dans le mouvement social.

Some analysts of the social movement of December 1995 did not hesitate in drawing an analogy with the Public Service strike of the summer of 1953. The latter paralyzed the country, and yet public opinion showed solidarity rather than any hostility. The movement was triggered by a right-wing government's attack on acquired social benefits, in particular the social security health-care system. However, beyond a simple defence of their own interests, which could perhaps be viewed as promoting just their own specific professional interests, the strikers expressed the lack of perspectives felt by all and thus became the spokespersons of a citizenry feeling deceived and powerless. Women, although active participants in this movement, remained invisible. Eight years after the end of World War II, women were doubly burdened with the perpetual reality of penury and the traditional morality, which had not at all evolved and with the left-wing organizations far from being the conduits of contestation in this area. Women's rate of employment was then one of the lowest of the century, and they occupied menial, poorly paid jobs, and it would be absurd to speak about "careers" for these women. However, numerous within the administration of the PTT (Post and Telegraph), these women discovered the liberating effect of the strike, and found again the paths taken by their predecessors

Certain convergences may be understood among the student movement of the Fall of 1995, the protest demonstration in favour of women's rights of the 25th of November, and the public sector strike. The author then further probes, more precisely, the nature of the movement of the fall of 1995. This had three essential characteristics : it was a united, unified movement, and it sketched elements of a projected egalitarian and solidarizing society. In order to understand the amplitude and the meaning of this movement, one should note the importance of taking into consideration the active participation of the women in this exceptional mobilization, and, more broadly speaking, the social relations between the sexes within France.

This article focuses upon the "gendered social movement" of November-December, 1995, as seen by the press. The author strives to question the sociology of social movements in the name of the transversality of the social relations of gender, and starts with two questions : 1) What was the nature of the social relations of gender within the November-December 1995 movement ; 2) What is the context of gendered social relations within the press itself when they are describing this movement ? It appears that the traditional social relations of gender were not only reproduced by the agents of the social movement but were also at the origin of a "patriarchal treatment" of events by the press. Women, as a social subject, reappeared during the demonstration for the rights of women of November 25th, 1995, but was missing from the other events composing the social movement.

Addition of corporatism or the possibility of collective objectives ? This polemic, concerning the movement of the fall of 1995, provides an invitation to further refine, in part, certain conceptualizations : the relations between the collective and individuals, the notion of class, and specifically the notion of the working class. A series of interviews within the movement permit us to re-examine the relations among conscience, collective goals, and individual narratives. We may at the same time rethink the notion of class which takes off from Flora Tristan's definition or that of the pre-1914 CGT [General Confederation of Labour].

Latin American women have long been active in public conflicts, some widely known, such as the Mothers of May Place in Argentina. But we know less well the recent mobilizations which constitute what may be called "an extraordinary historic moment," and which the participants themselves call "another way of doing politics," defined, rather, by a strategy based upon "difference". While recognizing the validity, the author wonders whether in this period of re-democratization within Latin America, the search for autonomy of "these new social movements" doesn't pose a problem : Democracy has needs for strong parties, where women have trouble gaining admittance despite the quotas sometimes instituted, and organizational strategies.

This article seeks to reconstruct the historical and geographical dynamics explaining the significant presence of women in the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN). First appearing in the poor Mexican state of Chiapas in January, 1994, this new type of revolutionary movement is the culmination of a wide variety of changes modifying the life of indigenous men and women in the region, and particularly, the social relations between the sexes. Making up a third of the Zapatista forces, the women were able to integrate the question of gender and formulate the Revolutionary Law of Women. Without them, the EZNL would have no doubt been a very different kind of movement, even though remaining a military organization dominated by men.