ARTICLES - Feminist Organizational "Success": The State of U. S. Women's Movement Organizations in the 1990s - Social movement theorists have tended to focus on issues of movement formation, origin and mobilization rather than on movement or organizational change over time. Those studies that have examined organizational change over time have tended to equate survival with success and demise with decline. Through research, interviews and participant-observation methods, this study examines eight national-level feminist organizations within the U.S. women's movement to try to identify particular characteristics of success and survival over time, while at the same time redefining traditional notions of organizational success. Success, which may include policy impact, public education, placing pools of activists into the movement for further mobilization, and achievement of policy goals, and may not necessarily mean survival or organizational maintenance, is often determined by an organization's ability to respond internally to external pressures. The organizations that have been best able to construct conflict as a strengthening rather than divisive component of discursive input and have chosen to renegotiate decision-making structures and expand their notions of feminism have been the most successful in the areas of mobilization and cultural success. KEYWORDS. Women's movement organizations, feminist organizational success

In: Women & politics, Volume 21, Issue 4, p. 39-76