Social movements such as the civil rights movement, the environment movement and the women's movement have changed the political landscape of Western democracies in recent decades. If social movements play a crucial role in bringing new issues onto the policy agenda and new actors into the policy process, we need to know more about the life-cycles of social movements and their effects on the Australian polity.

This project explores social movement evolution with reference to the experience of the Australian women's movement.

The project has four inter-connected aims, which are reflected in its structure:

1. to map the trajectory of the women's movement in Australia 1970–2005, especially by examining women's movement events;
2. to map the movement's institutional legacy;
3. to assess the movement's discursive impact, particularly by studying online communities; and
4. to build a better understanding of social movement evolution, by developing criteria whereby claims can be made that a social movement is either in abeyance or 'over'.

The project leaders are Marian Sawer and Sarah Maddison.

The project's capstone volume, The Women's Movement in Protest, Institutions and the Internet: Australia in transnational perspective, was published in 2013. Download the flyer.

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This project is funded by the Australian Research Council: Discovery grant number DP0878688.