This article uses intersectionality as an analytical tool to explore struggles for institutional space in policy processes in two ostensibly contrasting contexts: “republican” France and the “multicultural” United Kingdom. Specifically, the article undertakes within-case analysis of three policy processes. In France, we discuss the debate over laïcité, or secularism, the subsequent formulation of the March 2004 law banning the wearing of religious signs in state schools, and the creation of the High Authority for the Fight Against Discrimination (HALDE). In the UK, we examine the problem definitions, language, and subject positions constructed by the 2008 Single Equality Bill. The result of these analyses is that institutional actors employ similar (though not identical) practices in relation to intersections, which have similar outcomes for minority groups on either side of the English Channel. Through what we term a “logic of separation,” institutional actors severely curtail the “institutional space” available to minority ethnic groups to make complex and intersectional social justice claims. Even though France and the UK are often portrayed as opposites with regard to constructions of citizenship, we argue that these seemingly differing traditions of citizenship end up having a similar effect of misrecognizing minority women and men's experiences and demands.

The Ministry of Women's Affairs in Aotearoa/New Zealand was established as a stand-alone agency in 1986. It has remained institutionally intact for more than 20 years, unlike many women's policy agencies that have been downsized or eliminated. It has survived significant economic and state sector restructuring and weathered the extension of neoliberal orientations into the reform of social policy. We analyze New Zealand's version of state feminism during three political periods since its inception. For each period, we identify significant developments both in the broader political context and within the ministry itself, and examine how effective Women's Affairs has been in advancing the substantive interests of diverse groups of women. Our analysis identifies three key features of the Ministry of Women's Affairs—its political context, its political and bureaucratic leadership, and its institutional design—as important in explaining both the ministry's continued existence and the limits on what it has been able to achieve.

I explore the notion of ascriptive autonomy as a conceptual and political tool that can be used to understand and enact potentially liberatory practices that enable marginalized people to have greater individual autonomy. “Ascriptive autonomy” refers to the sense in which autonomy is partly constituted by the conferral of the status of “autonomous individual.” Autonomy is both a capacity to determine one's own ends and a status conferred by virtue of being recognized by others. I focus on the link between these two facets of autonomy insofar as recognition may enable the development of capacity. In certain situations, autonomy may be ascribed even if one lacks some requirements associated with the capacity for autonomy because of either institutional or psychic constraints that follow from oppression. In such instances of “selective, purposeful misrecognition,” ascription may lead to the cultivatation of the capacity for autonomy while opening up a space for politics. To demonstrate this, I recast the feminist debate over sexuality using the terms of ascriptive autonomy. When viewed through the lens of misrecognition, we can better respond to critiques that charge proponents of the “pro-sex”position with focusing on sexual pleasure at the expense of sufficient attention paid to the constraints faced by women.

Why have there been so many obituaries for the women's movement, written in so many different countries, despite so many continuing manifestations of life? We argue here that the problem is not simply the short attention span of the media and the constant quest for newness but also the terms in which social movements have been understood. This is partly a methodological question concerning how social movements are distinguished from other political actors, the repertoires that are expected of them, and the associated measurement of social movement activity through protest event databases. It is also a question of how “institutionalization” is understood. It has often been assumed that social movement activism is by definition extrainstitutional or that institutionalization is something that comes after, replaces, or usurps the role of social movements.

The social movements that first flourished in the 1960s and 1970s were initially characterized by protest activity against the state and against dominant norms, and by their only loosely organized structures. Over time, however, these social movements, including feminism, have become partially institutionalized in government and nongovernment bodies, and in policies, practices, and social norms.

Protest event analysis (PEA) and the related concept of repertoire of contention are widely used in the study of social movements. Are they appropriate for the study of feminist protest? I argue that conventional forms of protest event analysis may have significant limitations when applied to feminist protest. Unobtrusive or individualized forms of resistance and protest associated with feminism are difficult to measure through typical protest event data. Moreover, the concept of repertoires of contention retains within it a number of unwarranted gendered assumptions. Some flow from being too reliant upon protest event data. I suggest that repertoires may be gendered, that this is unacknowledged by those who use the concept, and that this has implications for its normative dimensions.

Social movements seek social and political change in very specific political, economic, and cultural contexts. Their very imperative for structural change means that they are nonbureaucratic, noninstitutional, fluid collectives that have no single head office and few formal records of their existence. This poses a substantial problem for researchers—how do we locate, measure, and record the trajectories of these phenomena?