The Power of Social Movements in Driving Positive Social Change in Australia

DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY

Introduction

The following assignment would be reflecting an essay elucidating on the collective power-quotient of the social movement-centric activities as the poignant agents driving positive social changes throughout Australia.

Additionally, it would be defining the purpose of these social movements along with simultaneously identifying the four types of social movements (as outlined by Aberle in 1966). Following this, the four stages of social movements would be explained concerning one of the three recurrent Australian Social Movements as provided in the brief.

For executing the progression of the report, I have decided to stick by the first option of The Women’s Movement as the project-centric social initiative topic of concern.

Report Essay

Through the generic and mainstream lens, a social movement refers to a loose effort that’s organised by an integrated public body who unified on the grounds of a mutually shared welfare-centric belief/ opinion that has been exclusively suppressed by the country’s mainstream culture for over a long-time span (Castelli Gattinara & Pirro, 2019). The group performs litigation activities to ensure their exact goal’s timely achievement for further ensuring the community’s overall liberation from the primitive socio-cultural and political constraints. These litigation activities can also reflect revolts and mutinies against an ongoing socio-cultural/ political phenomenon that’s mainly oppressive irrespective of its initiation theme of aiming at the upliftment of a specific socio-cultural/ political/ gender/ religious/ ethnic group. These groups can also resist the normative activity course of institutional/ organisational setups (of both public and private functioning) (Pedwell, 2019).

Elucidating social violence in Australia happens to be the most common phenomenon herein despite being one of the leading first world countries in terms of technical improvement and social empowerment. However, the gripping impact of racism herein owes to the concentration of its currently white inhabitants who still actively promote racism by stressing the European standards of beauty, which asserts the lingering social violence against people of colour. This also ensures the sustenance of patriarchy herein, which asserts the exertion of both social as well as domestic violence and abuses, especially against women. Reportedly, around one in ten women is either mentally or physically assaulted either by a stranger (in the public setup) or their former love interests/ current partners/ spouses (in the domestic/ household setup). The latter is an extremely common phenomenon in every Australian household and despite the gradual decrease of this toxicity over the last decade, the incidents haven’t completely terminated either. This type of violence does not exclude the violent abuses hurled out at each other during these personal spats or encounters (Mainey et al., 2022).

Considering the active intention behind the commencement of social movements, this phenomenon positively alters the Australian civilization’s various primitive social aspects hindering and/ or limiting one’s freedom of expression, especially on the grounds of gender discrimination.

Actively, social movements are viewed as agents of sexism liberation as (Young et al., 2019). The mutiny group are integrated and unified against the common ground of social oppression. This integrity empowers oppressed women to vent out their pent-up disturbances and mental unrest owing to being subjected to gender-based violence over decades in both internal and external setups. This empowerment evades away social fear from every Australian woman’s within and compels them to take a stand for exercising their basic human rights within both their public and private setups. This awakening impacts the previously existing social setup which eventually alters the country’s economic, employment and infrastructural setups with the increased recruitment of women in their respective domains of interest. This recruitment schedule prioritises one’s talent across any sort of privilege (be it on the grounds of heritage wealth or gender-based preferences).

Women are gaining their freedom of combatting all social odds and assaults by actively dodging/ stopping the assaults. Increased social awareness regarding gender equality is altering the setup and functional patterns of every authoritative body, owing to which a woman’s police complaint also receives equal weightage. Awareness through social movements and education is prompting groups to set up influential NGOs and related bodies to provide legal support to oppressed women and children for ensuring their complete liberation and empowerment. Women can now freely roam through any and every city street without bearing the fear of getting assaulted by goons.

The purpose of executing social movements corely aims at ensuring women’s complete freedom and empowerment within the Australian setup, so that they can equally participate with men as individual entities within any sort of social, corporal, legislative, public and/ or authoritative set-up to make use of their inculcated knowledge to validate their procured degrees. Another purpose of these social movements is to impart a sense of self-security and sufficiency to the Australian women so that they don’t have to rely on a man escorting them from their respective workplaces for ensuring their public safety. Empathising with relationship crises in the Australian setup, these movements aim to enlighten women about their self-worth so that they don’t rush into toxic relationships for the sake of attaining a boyfriend’s companionship either out of peer pressure or unbearable loneliness. This would enable them to focus on their self-development, in the course of which they might re-connect their old skills/ hobbies and/ or interests and thrive to excel in the same apart from their respective career lives.

However, this cycle doesn’t end here as these movements also aim at liberating the Australian men from following their old-school and irrational ideas and systems by empathising with their female counterparts primarily as human beings with similar feelings, emotions and life passion who too dream to lead an independently flexible life by mutually enjoying their freedom of expression and other human rights in both public and private setups (Reinecke, 2018).

In 1966, Sir David Aberle introduced four special types/ approaches of social movements; which were exclusively known as the ‘alternative’, ‘redemptive’, ‘reformative’ and ‘revolutionary social movements’ (Quraisy et al., 2018).

Their distinctivenesses are based on two primary virtues:

Whom is the movement aiming at with an alteration approach?

The intensity of the advocated alteration

Elucidating on individual social movement identified above:

Alternative Social Movements: These movements target a selective population segment for altering their social outlook and lifestyle. These groups also fixate on the pace of alteration for such groups as distinctively individual entities. These movements call for the demographic segment’s enlightenment regarding various familial/ marital/ sexual aspects for helping them to raise happy and healthy families.

Redemptive Social Movements: This movement also targets a demographic segment, but with a more radical approach by ensuring a faster pace of altering their mentality. This approach is applicable for breaking social taboos and stereotypes.

Reformative Social Movements: This movement bears a gentler approach by enabling every Australian citizen to empathise with whatever crimes they’ve committed so far (till the time it is under the unlearning phase by the entire mass for being recently acknowledged) in both public and private setups for assuring their complete eviction henceforth, to stabilise the society’s atrocious disharmony. Raising awareness regarding the depleting raw materials to ensure their timely rejuvenation for future generations falls under this category.

Revolutionary Social Movements: These target every national/ global citizen by drawing their attention towards a macro phenomenon which went neglected over considerable periods but greatly affected every human being’s growth and development. Raising mental awareness across global platforms can fall under this condition.

Conclusion

The following assignment has reflected an essay elucidating the collective power quotient of the social movement-centric activities as the poignant agents driving positive social changes throughout Australia.

Additionally, it has defined the purpose of these social movements along with simultaneously identifying the four types of social movements (as outlined by Aberle in 1966). Following this, the four stages of social movements have been explained concerning one of the three recurrent Australian Social Movements as provided in the brief.

For executing the progression of the report, I selected the first option of The Women’s Movement as the project-centric social initiative topic of concern.

References

Castelli Gattinara, P., & Pirro, A. L. (2019). The far right as social movement. European Societies, 21(4), 447-462.

Mainey, L., O'mullan, C., & Reid-Searl, K. (2022). Working with or against the system: Nurses' and midwives' process of providing abortion care in the context of gender-based violence in Australia. Journal of Advanced Nursing.

Pedwell, C. (2019). Digital tendencies: intuition, algorithmic thought and new social movements. Culture, Theory and Critique, 60(2), 123-138.

Quraisy, H., Kasnawi, M. T., Sewang, A. M., & Tahir, H. (2018). Muhammadiyah Social Movement In Wajo Regency. IOSR J. Humanit. Soc. Sci, 23(3), 45-50.

Reinecke, J. (2018). Social movements and prefigurative organizing: Confronting entrenched inequalities in Occupy London. Organization Studies, 39(9), 1299-1321.

Young, A., Selander, L., & Vaast, E. (2019). Digital organizing for social impact: Current insights and future research avenues on collective action, social movements, and digital technologies. Information and Organization, 29(3), 100257.