Motherhood and Opportunities for Activism Before and After the Czech Velvet Revolution

Extant social movement research emphasizes the nexus of gender and opportunity structures in a variety of contexts, yet little work has examined how gender mediates the effects of structural opportunities on activism over time. We advance the existing literature by examining environmental activism framed around motherhood in pre- and post-revolutionary Czech Republic. Our analysis draws from rich qualitative data, collected over a ten-year span, which highlight temporal changes in mother activism in these two distinct eras. Contrary to expectation, gendered opportunities for mother activists expanded during the repressive era of the communist regime and contracted following the 1989 velvet revolution. We show how and why these dynamics occurred, and conclude by discussing implications for future social movement research on gender and gendered opportunities.