{"id":290,"date":"2025-04-22T11:36:16","date_gmt":"2025-04-22T10:36:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/igdc\/?p=290"},"modified":"2025-05-14T09:52:34","modified_gmt":"2025-05-14T08:52:34","slug":"power-politics-and-climate-care-older-women-activists-of-extinction-rebellion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/igdc\/2025\/04\/22\/power-politics-and-climate-care-older-women-activists-of-extinction-rebellion\/","title":{"rendered":"Power, Politics and Climate Care: Older Women Activists of Extinction Rebellion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Peter Gardner, Susannah Williams, and Andrew Macdonald (cover image by Julia Hawkins<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Older women have been the linchpin of post-2018 climate activism across the Global North. Much excellent work in social movement studies has explored the experiences, perspectives and outlooks of young environmental activists. However, the roles played by older women activists have received little attention. In our paper, \u201cGlued on for the grandkids: The gendered politics of care in the global environmental movement<\/a>\u201d, we explore the stories of 10 older women organisers in Extinction Rebellion in the US, Canada, Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, and the UK. We analysed the role of \u201ccare\u201d in the contemporary environmental movement, arguing that care, for these organisers, in some ways replicates and in other ways contradicts the patriarchy and ageism inherent in broader society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Climate Activism as Radical Care<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We don\u2019t always think of engaging in activism as a form of \u201ccaring\u201d. Yet, activism requires that individuals undertake various caring acts. Organising a social movement and engaging in environmental protest takes time, resources, and emotional energy, including organisational, physical and emotional forms of care labour (James, 1992). Consider, for example, what goes into the organising of regular meetings, running email and social media accounts, delivering public talks, supporting new activists, writing press releases, and coordinating public protests. Climate movements are often joined by people suffering from climate anxiety and angry about the lack of appropriate responses from the government. Activists care for others in the movement and their communities as they face the climate emergency head-on, all while facing intense public and media backlash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then there is the reason individuals get involved in climate activism in the first place: the desire to avert climate and ecological catastrophe. Engaging in protest to demand systemic change is a huge burden and recent years have witnessed changes to the legal landscape that make engaging in protest more personally dangerous. Activists are now threatened with large fines and long prison sentences for actions that were previously legal. In the UK, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 and Public Order Act 2023 have made all activism considerably riskier. Laws curtailing protest have also been passed at the state level in the US (e.g. Florida\u2019s Combating Public Disorder Act of 2021), Australia (the Roads and Crimes Legislation Amendment Bill 2022, New South Wales), and Canada (Alberta\u2019s Critical Infrastructure Defence Act 2020). Faced with the full force of the law, continuing to advocate for a better world represents a profound form of care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From its inception, Extinction Rebellion placed care at the forefront of its approach, incorporating self-care, care for the community, and care for the planet into its theory of change (Westwell and Bunting 2020). Others have noted the \u201cradical kindness\u201d of the climate activist community: a willingness to place oneself in a position of significant personal risk for the sake of the billions of others worldwide facing climate breakdown (Pickard, Bowman and Arya 2020). However, few scholars have considered how this radical caring has played out in terms of gender and age. Through our research, we noticed that these roles were frequently taken on by older women activists in Extinction Rebellion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Care as a Problem<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Care is gendered. Feminist research has long pointed out the connection between patriarchal expectations placed on women and the economy of care. Such caring roles span the formal and the informal, the paid and the unpaid, the public and the private. Drawing on Ahmed\u2019s (2004) concept of affective economies, we take \u201ccare\u201d to be a communal and socially produced act: a powerful force that binds communities together and creates new social realities. In this sense, care can both burden and empower.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The older women we talked to described various situations in which they adopted roles they would not otherwise have chosen. Oftentimes, this happened when other activists failed to take on these roles themselves or simply assumed that the older women activists would do so. Some found themselves \u201cleft carrying the can\u201d (Dorothy, Australia) or taking on \u201canything that nobody else is doing until somebody else takes it on, to make things happen\u201d (Helen, Aotearoa New Zealand).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Older women tended to take on the \u201cbackbone\u201d tasks: \u201cdoing the boring bits, because some of these boring bits have to be done\u201d (Mary, Australia). When COVID-19 hit, it was often the older women of Extinction Rebellion that kept the movement going; filling in the organisational gaps, setting up and maintaining meetings, and generally \u201cholding it together\u201d (Mary, Australia). If interpersonal problems arose, these activists also tended to be the ones relied on to mediate and care for the emotions of the group. Overall, our research found that the environmental movement \u2013 though progressive in many ways \u2013 is nonetheless impacted by ageist and gendered norms at work in wider society, often reproducing unequal divisions in activist labour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Empowering Care<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although caring for the movement was often a burden placed on older women activists, it can also be empowering. As core organisers in a powerful and transnational movement, they are a key component in the global struggle against climate catastrophe. The fact that they were frequently left to undertake the \u201cboring bits\u201d of activism doesn\u2019t necessitate a lack of agency. Rather, the 10 women the paper focuses on suggested that taking on these roles came out of deep care for humanity, the environment, and the environmental movement itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The women we spoke to were experts in community organising. Many had been involved in social movements for decades, and were able to draw on a wealth of knowledge and experience gained through their participation in, for example, the 1968 students\u2019 movement, the anti-Apartheid movement, peace camps and anti-war rallies in the 1970s and \u201880s, and the 2011-12 Occupy movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some older women Extinction Rebellion activists used societal expectations to their advantage. Stereotypical images of older women as weak, meek, sweet and agreeable were played with to facilitate entry into spaces or to engage in riskier forms of protest without being arrested. When the movement used mass arrest as a tactic, some older women chose to be arrested first, as the image of the frail \u201cold woman with a cane\u201d being man-handled by uniformed police officers provided a more positive media narrative and aided in building public support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall, we argue that \u201ccaring for the movement\u201d has involved a tension between burden and empowerment. Older women of Extinction Rebellion were, through their care, relied upon to hold the movement together, but in doing so have also been powerful political actors in their communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

References<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ahmed, S. 2004. Affective economies. Social Text<\/em>, 22<\/em>(2), 117\u2013139.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gardner, P., Williams, S. and Macdonald, A., 2024. Glued on for the grandkids: The gendered politics of care in the global environmental movement. Sociology Compass<\/em>, 18<\/em>(1), p.e13148.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

James, N. (1992). Care = organisation + physical labour + emotional labour. Sociology of Health & Illness<\/em>, 14<\/em>(4), 488\u2013509.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pickard, S., Bowman, B. and Arya, D., 2020. \u201cWe are radical in our kindness\u201d: The political socialisation, motivations, demands and protest actions of young environmental activists in Britain. Youth and Globalization<\/em>, 2<\/em>(2), pp.251-280.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Westwell, E. and Bunting, J., 2020. The regenerative culture of Extinction Rebellion: self-care, people care, planet care. Environmental Politics<\/em>, 29<\/em>(3): 546-551.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Peter Gardner, Susannah Williams, and Andrew Macdonald (cover image by Julia Hawkins) Older women have been the linchpin of post-2018 climate activism across the Global North. Much excellent work in social movement studies has explored the experiences, perspectives and outlooks of young environmental activists. However, the roles played by older women activists have received … Continue reading Power, Politics and Climate Care: Older Women Activists of Extinction Rebellion<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":250,"featured_media":291,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-blog-posts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/igdc\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2025\/04\/Extinction_Rebellion-12-Julia-Hawkins.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"custom_fields":{"_edit_lock":["1747212754:250"],"_g_feedback_shortcode_06cdb85df8ae6a7c5d42b27600bf34efb0c8e48f":["\n\t\t\t\t[contact-field label=\"Name\" type=\"name\" required=\"true\" \/]\n\t\t\t\t[contact-field label=\"Email\" type=\"email\" required=\"true\" \/]\n\t\t\t\t[contact-field label=\"Website\" type=\"url\" \/]\n\t\t\t\t[contact-field label=\"Message\" type=\"textarea\" \/]"],"_g_feedback_shortcode_atts_06cdb85df8ae6a7c5d42b27600bf34efb0c8e48f":["a:17:{s:2:\"to\";s:20:\"l.spencer@york.ac.uk\";s:7:\"subject\";s:125:\"[Interdisciplinary Global Development Centre] Power, Politics and Climate Care: Older Women Activists of Extinction Rebellion\";s:12:\"show_subject\";s:2:\"no\";s:6:\"widget\";i:0;s:14:\"block_template\";N;s:19:\"block_template_part\";N;s:2:\"id\";i:290;s:18:\"submit_button_text\";s:6:\"Submit\";s:14:\"customThankyou\";s:0:\"\";s:21:\"customThankyouHeading\";s:26:\"Your message has been sent\";s:21:\"customThankyouMessage\";s:30:\"Thank you for your submission!\";s:22:\"customThankyouRedirect\";s:0:\"\";s:10:\"jetpackCRM\";b:1;s:9:\"className\";N;s:9:\"postToUrl\";N;s:14:\"salesforceData\";N;s:12:\"hiddenFields\";N;}"],"_thumbnail_id":["291"],"_edit_last":["250"]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/igdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/igdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/igdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/igdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/250"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/igdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/igdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/igdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/igdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/igdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/igdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}