Women who challenge or defend the status quo: Ingroup identities as predictors of progressive and reactionary collective action

Collective action (CA) research looking at gender has focused predominantly on feminist activism, overlooking activism of women who reinforce gender inequalities and traditional gender roles (such as women supporting men's rights or anti-abortion protesters). Our research addresses this oversight, demonstrating the key role of identity content in predicting CA in support of progressive and reactionary social change among women. Using two large online samples of women from the US (Study 1: N = 1,825) and the UK (Study 2: N = 992), we show that identification with ‘women’ is either weakly associated or unrelated to progressive and reactionary CA and is thus too broad to differentiate between support for CA with opposing goals. In contrast, subgroup identities matter: feminist identification is associated with support for progressive CA, while identification with traditional women is associated with support for reactionary CA. We discuss the implications of our findings for research on CA and gender inequalities.